The confusing life of the Tamers
by Rainbow35
Summary: This is a Tamers story, there's confusing romance, and a big surprise at the end. All sorts of pairings, including: Rukato, Kazu/Ayaka, and a few others. Complete, finally! There will be a sequel, look out for it! R&R please, you won't regret it! xD
1. The start of it all

Hi everyone!

Terriermon: So what's _this_ one about?

Me: Uh... Yeah, about that...

Lopmon: Don't tell me you're saying that you have _no idea_ what you're going to write.

Me: Well, I don't really need to tell you do I, because you figured it out by yourself. Anyways, you see, I was going around the site,

Terriermon: Because you have no social life.

Me: Shut up. Anyways, then I realised that there's hardly any Tamers stories up there, never mind many good ones. (No offence to anyone who has written a Tamers story recently) And a lot of the good stories I found were unfinished and had been abandoned. Which is tragic, because two of them contain one of my favorite pairings, Kazu/Ayaka.

Terriermon: You're still obsessed with that thing?

Me: Not obsessed, just really like it. I've also found myself falling in love with stories that kinda reflect life.

Terriermon: Because you don't have one.

Me: Would you be quiet already?!

Terriermon: No.

Lopmon: So, is this story ever going to start?

Me: Well... I was kinda stalling for time...

Lopmon: When you write a story, you should at least have _some_ idea of what it might be about first.

Me: Hey, all my other stories were just winging it. My very best one was an extension of something I dreamed up at 1am because I couldn't sleep.

Lopmon: I know, but still...

Me: Okay, let's brainstorm, right here, right now. You guys _are_ my muses, that means you need to inspire me. So, quick! 3 pairings!

Lopmon: You should have done this _before_ you started writing...

Me: By the way, if you people reading this are getting bored, or don't want spoilers of things that may or may not happen, scroll down to the story. If you actually care about whatever chaos me Terriermon and Lopmon manage to create, stay tuned for a while.

Terriermon: Okay, you asked for pairings... HenRika, Ryuki, and Rukato.

Me: Um... No confusing love triangles or squares or whatever that would be.

Lopmon: (sigh) We've reached almost a page full of this nonsense. But, HenRika, Ryuki, Kazu/Ayaka, Rukato, Jerato, Suzie/Mako if you care to go there, and throw in anything else you want. Make someone gay or something, I don't care.

Me: What pairings did you say? I've gotta write this down...

Terriermon: Hey, you said no love thingies!

Lopmon: I was thinking, you like life-ish stories right? Life has confusing people all liking millions of people who all like different millions of people. And, after you have emotional chaos established, maybe throw in some action, like fight scenes or something. And-

Terriermon: Um, do you not think we should like, _not_ be giving the story away before it's even started?

Me: I typed a spoiler warning. Besides, summaries often give away just as much. So lets see, crazy pairings, emotional chaos, fights. Perfect.

Terriermon: That's good, gonna write it now?

Me: Uh...

Lopmon: Well here's the disclaimer, Rainbow doesn't own digimon, or anything really, and she _is_ going to start the story, whether she likes it or not.

Me: Nooo, have mercy! I'm not ready ye- (get's cut off by line-break indicating story starting)

* * *

It was just another afternoon in Shinjuku, but it was the weekend, so none of the Tamers were in school. Takato and Henry were in the park with Guilmon and Terriermon.

"I'm bored." Takato said, lying under a tree with his eyes closed.

"Hey, I'm bored too, but you don't see me complaining about it. Hang on, where'd Guilmon and Terriermon go?"

Takato opened his eyes and looked around, and sure enough, the digimon were nowhere in sight.

"Well, I heard them talking, and Terriermon said something along the lines of 'Come with me, I wanna show you something cool.'."

Henry groaned. "They could be anywhere by now, what with Terriermon and his somewhat warped ideas of 'cool'."

"How warped?"

"He goes through phases... Let's see... What was he obsessed with last..."

"I never pictured Terriermon to be the obsessive type."

"Well... Since they all came back from the digital world... He used to just go along with whatever Suzie liked, TV shows and stuff. But then he started getting his own interests, namely bizarre ones, like seeing what happens when you put various things in the microwave..." He half smiled, half frowned at the thought.

"Right..."

"Yeah, lately he's been following Jaarin around, I don't understand why..."

"She's your older sister right?"

"Yeah, I think I'll call her and see if she's seen Terriermon or Guilmon around."

His phone rang for a little bit, until Jaarin answered.

"_Hello?"_

"Hi. Have you seen Terriermon around?"

"_No... Why, did you lose him?"_

"Well, yeah. He ran off."

"_I suppose if you knew where he was you wouldn't be asking me... Anyway, haven't seen him anywhere..."_

At this point she was interrupted by someone in the background, Henry couldn't make out what they were saying, but her reply sounded something like; "Not today, maybe next time, look, my brothers on the phone and if he finds out..."

"Jaarin, who was that in the background?" Henry asked her supicously.

"_Huh? Oh, no-one, just my boyfriend..."_

Before Henry could say anything, Terriermon and Guilmon came running over to them noisily.

"Hiya Henry! Who you on the phone to?" Terriermon asked loudly, while jumping on to Henry's shoulder.

"I was on the phone to Jaarin, asking her if she knew where you were." He went to say something to Jaarin, but she had hung up.

Takato was getting up afer being jumped on by Guilmon.

"What happened? You look like you're thinking or something..."

Henry smiled at that. "Yeah, I am thinking. It's just- Never mind, it doesn't matter."

"Oh, okay... Hey, what time is it?"

"About six thirty."

A look of panic crossed Takato's face.

"I was meant to be home half an hour ago..."

"Okay then, bye, talk to you later!" He yelled to Takato as he ran as fast as he could to get home, as if running that fast would somehow make him be home a half hour ago.

"Should we go home too?" Terriermon asked.

"Yeah."

* * *

When the two of them got home, they were greeted by the sight of Suzie yelling at the DVD player.

"Why should I give you DVDs if you won't give them back?!" She sounded on the verge of tears, Henry had probably got here just in time. He went and restrained her from kicking the DVD player.

"Hey, don't cry Suzie, it's okay. I'll make it behave, alright?"

"(sob) Good."

"Hey Suzie, where's Lopmon?" Terriermon asked.

"She's in my room, reading or something boring like that. She wouldn't even play chasing, can you believe that?"

"Yeah... You know... Maybe I'll go read..." And with that, Terriermon went into Suzie's room to "read". In other words, to be with Lopmon.

Suzie sighed. "Henry, if Terriermon's so totally in love with Lopmon, why doesn't he just marry her?"

Henry looked up from the DVD player which had three disks stuck in it somehow, and replied, "Suzie, it's not that simple. She'd have to love him back, not to mention he doesn't even know he likes her that way."

"Don't be silly Henry, if he loves her then she's _got _to love him back, and then they get married and live happily ever after." Suzie said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Henry sighed, she was only five, she wasn't going to understand something as complex as love, especially with all the princess movies she watches. He sighed. If only life and love _were_ that simple though... But there's no need to think about _that, _he's trying to fix the DVD player. How did she manage to get three of them stuck in there anyway?

"Suzie, how did you get _three_ disks into the DVD player?"

"Umm... Well the better question is, when are you gonna get them out?"

"I don't think I can, we'll have to get someone else to try. In the meantime, why don't you watch TV?"

"Yay! TV!"

Henry laughed slightly as he turned the TV on for her, little kids are so easy to please, he should have done this earlier. He sighed, this was the fourth DVD player in a month, what with Terriermon and his short-term obsession with putting things in microwaves, Lopmon not knowing what to do with DVDs, Suzie and her impatience with the device, this place was turning into a DVD player destroying chamber...

Just then, the phone rang.

"Hello?"

* * *

And I'll end this here.

Terriermon: Going back to the put-a-cliffhanger-at-the-end-of-every-chapter-so-you'll-remember-what-to-do-next thing, huh?

Me: Maybe... Anyways, people reading this, yes, you, at the computer! Please review, tell me what you think, request a pairing, guess who was on the phone, tell me what I'm doing wrong, anything, just review please!

And I'm not begging, just... I really like reviews... Anyways, bye for now!


	2. The phone call

Hi again everyone!

Terriermon: Should I even bother to ask what's gonna happen in this chapter?

Me: Nope. You know the answer already.

Lopmon: How about we try to drag some ideas out of you like yesterday?

Me: I don't know... I wonder why I can only write under pressure...

Terriermon: I don't know. So, is this gonna continue from the last chapter, or what?

Me: Uh... Oh yeah! _Now_ I remember where I'd wanted to go with that, yeah...

Lopmon: Yeah what?

Me: It's gonna kinda continue from the last chapter, but kinda not.

Terriermon: Okay...

Me: So... Now what?

Lopmon: Write it?

Me: Guess so.

* * *

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Rika was watching TV with Renamon. Well, she was actually thinking, and didn't notice when Renamon changed the channel.

"That's it, I have to do it today."

Renamon drew her atention from the TV to look at her tamer. "What do you have to do today?"

"Nothing. It was Jeri's idea. Why should I tell you anyway?"

"Because I'm your partner. And I want to make sure nothing happens to you."

"Nothing's gonna happen to me. And when did you change the channel?"

Renamon went to change it back, but was interrupted by Rika. "Don't bother, I'm not going to watch it anyway."

And with that, she walked away.

* * *

Rika walked down the street, thinking to herself. "I wonder if this is such a good idea after all, there's so many things that could go wrong... Well, I guess all I can do is try and see what happens. And there's always a possible plan B..."

She stopped walking and turned around to go home. She figured that would be best.

When she got there, went into her room and locked herself in, but not before Renamon ran in without her noticing.

"I hope this works..."

"Rika, what is it you're trying to accomplish? And what will happen if it goes wrong?"

Rika blushed. "Well... Uh... Look, I'm goona ask someone out, now leave me alone!"

"Alright."

Rika picked up her phone and called Henry's house.

"_Hello?"_

"Hi."

"_Hey Rika. What is it, or do you just want to talk?"_

"Um... Will you go out with me?"

"_W-what? G-go out with you?! Uh... Okay..."_

"Cool. Is tomorrow good?"

"_Y-yeah, sure..."_

"Good. Meet you at the park at three, okay?"

"_Okay..."_

She hung up with a smile on her face, this just might work...

* * *

(Switch POV)

Henry stared at the phone, bewildered. Had Rika just _asked him out_? Suzie went over to Henry.

"Rika asked you out? Yay! Now you'll be boyfriend and girlfriend and _everything_!"

"Everything? Never mind, I don't think I even want to know. Yeah, she asked me out, I'm going to meet her at the park tomorrow. But you're too young for me to be talking to you about this."

"No I'm not! I'm a big kid now!"

"Alright, you're a big kid. Why don't you go back to watching TV or something."

"Okay..." Suzie said reluctantly as she went back to the TV.

Henry sighed and went into his room. He sat on his bed and thought. Why did Rika ask him out? She didn't seem to like him that way, or anyone. Why him? What if he did something wrong tomorrow? She wouldn't hurt him, but she might hate him or something.

"Let's see," He thought, " All the things that could go wrong tomorrow... Why did I say yes? What if she tries to kiss me or something? Well I suppose I could just do it... But I don't like her that way... Why did I say yes? I suppose if I'd said no she'd get upset, or hate me, or... Something. (sigh) Why is this so hard?"

He lied down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes, in the hope that he would get some answers somehow.

* * *

He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes again, the clock said ten pm.

"Great, I fell asleep. Oh well, might as well do something since I won't be tired again for a while."

He went into the living room, and saw Terriermon and Lopmon asleep on the sofa. He smiled at how cute they looked. He turned the TV on at a low volume. Lopmon woke up.

"What's going on? What time is it?"

"It's about ten. I saw you and Terriermon asleep there, I had fallen asleep a few hours ago so I turned the TV on."

"Oh, okay."

After not too long, the two of them got tired. Lopmon just fell asleep then and there, but Henry turned off the TV first, and went to bed.

* * *

(Switch POV)

It was Sunday morning, and it was the start of a new day. Rika got out of bed, and got dressed and stuff, and thought about her upcoming date with Henry.

"Why did I ask him out? Something's gonna go wrong, I just know it. That's what happens when you follow Jeri's advice... But what else could I do, she'd have gotten all offended if I said no. (sigh) How do I get into these situations?"

She looked at the clock, it was ten thirty. Her date was in... four and a half hours. Not like she was counting it down or anything... Four hours twenty nine minutes... What was she going to wear? Not like it matters or anything, but still... Four hours twenty eight minutes... Staring at the clock wasn't going to help her...

She brought her attention away from the clock and sighed. Why did she follow Jeri's advice?

* * *

(Switch POV)

Jeri was at the park with her friends, Ayaka and Miki. She had told them about her plan to help Rika, she knew Rika wouldn't mind. Much.

"So Jeri," Ayaka said, "Are you totally sure your plan will work?"

"Of course I am! It'll work perfectly!"

"And you're perfectly okay with her liking him?" Miki asked.

"Yeah, of course! She's my friend, I just want her to be happy. In fact, I think I'll call her and see how she's doing."

The phone rang for a bit until Rika answered.

"Hi Rika! How's everything going?"

"_Fine. I'm kinda thinknig that maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, though."_

"Don't be silly Rika, of course it's a good idea. You like him, so you _should_ try and make him notice you!"

"_Yeah, but what if he _doesn't_ notice?"_

"Hmm... Maybe try harder then! By the way, I hope you don't mind, but I told Ayaka and Miki about this."

"_(sigh) Well, as long as they don't tell anyone, I guess it's okay... Do you know the exceptions I make for you? If that had been anyone else, I'd have tracked them down and killed them."_

"I'm sure glad I'm me then!"

"_Bye, Jeri."_

"Bye then!"

Jeri hung up and returned her attention to her friends.

"So? What'd she say?" Ayaka inquired.

"She was having her doubts about whether this is a good idea or not."

"Well, it's _not_ the most foolproof plan ever..."

"It works in movies!"

"Yeah, but... (sigh) Oh well. I suppose we'll see then, won't we?"

"So... Who do you guys like then? Maybe I could set you up... Kazu and Kenta maybe?"

"JERI!" Ayaka and Miki yelled simutaneously, blushing slightly.

"What? You'd make some cute couples!"

* * *

Alright, ending this chapter here.

Terriermon: No cliffhanger?

Me: Hopefully I've made people wonder what's going on here. Or maybe it's easy to figure out. Anyways, I hope I'm doing good so far.

Lopmon: Don't forget to review people! And Rainbow, since you're such a pushover, and would consistently update whether people review or not, I'm going to ban you from updating until you get at least 2 reviews!

Me: Why?

Lopmon: Be quiet for the moment. People reading, you heard what I said. No updates until this story gets 2 more reviews.

Me: Which reminds me, thanks Raakshii for reviewing! : D Anwyays, please review, or Lopmon will ban me from updating... : (

Bye-bye!


	3. The date

Hi everyone! Welcome to chapter 3!

Lopmon: Didn't I ban you from updating?

Me: Yes you did. Unsuccessfully.

Terriermon: So... You actually got _less than 2_ reviews?

Me: Yep! Since I can't change it, I might as well embrace it! And I did get _one_ review. Thanks Raakshii, for reviewing! And apparently the last chapter was confusing... That's good, it was what I was going for. So some things may or may not be cleared up in this chapter, I'm not sure yet. Anyways, please review this chapter, I know for a fact that people _do_ read this, so please review.

Terriermon: You haven't written anything yet, what are you teling people to review?!

Me: Uh...

Terriermon: Exactly. Now, chapter time?

Me: Um, I guess so...

* * *

We are skipping forward to Henry and Rika's date.

Henry and Rika met up in the park.

"Hey." Henry said, smiling awkwardly and looking away slightly.

"Hi..."

"What do you wanna do?"

"This was a bad idea."

Henry looked at her in surprise. "What? What do you mean? You didn't have to ask me out you know..."

"(sigh) I don't know... Do you want to go to a movie or something?"

"You don't sound very enthusiastic... But okay. What movies do you want to see?"

"How do you expect me to know?! Just shut up!!" Rika yelled.

Henry looked at her, almost in fear. They walked silently to the cinema.

* * *

When they got there, Henry tried again.

"Do you want to see this?" He asked, pointing to a comedy.

"Comedies suck."

"Okay then, what _do_ you like?"

"Can we go to a... a romance movie?" She whispered the last bit, and looked almost ashamed for asking that.

"Yeah, sure. There's nothing wrong with that you know."

"Yeah, but I hate romance movies."

"We could always go to something different, or we could not watch it, just talk or something."

"'Something' being..."

Henry blushed at what she thought he was implying. "Uh, I didn't mean anything like that..."

"Okay. So, romance it is then. And you're paying. And we're getting popcorn, which you're also paying for."

"Okay."

They bought tickets and popcorn and went in to the movie and sat down.

Henry started thinking. "Is she just using me or something? I mean, she made me pay for everything, she was acting a little strange, and she doesn't seem to want to be here... I wonder what's going on..."

He snapped out of his thoughts when the movie started. It seemed like it was going to be terrible.

"So... Rika... What do you think of the movie?"

"Looks cliche, sappy, boring, and pathetic."

"Oh well. Are we gonna watch it, or..."

"You can watch it if you want, I'm gonna stare at the popcorn, it's more fun."

Henry laughed slightly. He looked around at the rest of the people in the cinema. Two rows in front of them, he saw his sister, Jaarin, and her boyfriend. He remembered the phone call the day before, and wondered what was going on between them. He decided the he and Rika should move forward a bit, so he could get a better view.

He turned to Rika, who, true to her word, was staring at the popcorn.

"Rika."

"Huh? Yeah?"

"That popcorn is really interesting isn't it?", He laughed. "Can we move forward a row?"

"Why?"

"I see my sister and her boyfriend two rows ahead, and there's something suspicious going on between them, and I want to try and find out what."

"Okay then, sounds more interesting than the movie, _or_ the popcorn."

"Cool." So, they moved forward, and attempted to eavesdrop on Jaarin and her boyfriend.

"Cool movie, isn't it?" Jaarin said to her boyfriend.

"It's okay, I guess. I'd have preferred something more action-y."

"Yeah I guess. Wanna _create_ some action?" She asked, smiling.

"Sure." And with that, they started making out.

"You know what, I prefer watching the popcorn." Rika said.

"Yeah... Me too..."

"You've seen what's going on, can we move back like, ten rows?"

"How about... We move _forward_ two? I can hear them, but we don't have to look at them, and they probably won't notice us, 'cause, you know..."

"Okay."

So they moved forward two rows, ending up in front of Jaarin and her boyfriend.

"You know," Rika said, "I'm surprised you aren't trying to flirt with me or anything yet."

"I'm not the flirting type, and _you're_ the one that asked _me_ out. So if anyone was going to flirt, it would be you."

"But I don't like you. Damn, I didn't mean to say that..."

"If you don't like me, then why'd you ask me out?"

Rika blushed and looked away. "I don't know... It was Jeri's idea..."

Henry smiled. "Well that says a lot. Why did Jeri make you ask me out?"

"If I tell you, do you _promise_ not to tell _anyone_?"

"Yes, I promise."

"Okay," Rika whispered, "I like Takato. I told Jeri that, and she figured that I should go out with someone else to make him realise what he was missing, and go out with me, and you were the only other boy that I don't hate."

Henry whispered back. "Hang on, go back a bit, you like Takato?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"He's just, so... I don't know, stupid, nice, _cute_, as Jeri would say."

"You do know that dating someone to make someone else jealous not only doesn't work, but is really mean to the person being used." He said, trying not to sound hurt, but he couldn't help it.

Rika looked away guiltily. "Sorry... But it's not my fault if you get your hopes up too easily. And I did it because I didn't have any ideas of my own, so I figured I might as well do what Jeri says. Besides, it _might_ work."

"I kinda doubt it... Do you wanna watch the movie?"

"Yeah okay."

They watched the movie until the heard a noise from behind them. Rika went to turn around, but Henry stopped her.

"Don't, just listen. If you want to see what's going on, take your phone out, as long as it's off." He took his phone out to look at his sister's reflection behind him, and see what was going on. Rika just listened.

"Ricky, stop it!"

"Aw, come on baby, you know you want to..."

"No! Stop touching me!"

Henry could tell from the reflection that Ricky had grabbed Jaarin's throat. He was very afraid for her, but hoped she would make the right decision.

She pushed him away, and screamed at the top of her voice; "HELP, SOMEBODY, RAPE!!"

"No, no, it's not, she's exaggerating..." Ricky said guiltily.

Henry and Rika turned around simultaneously, a second before everyone else in the cinema. Jaarin edged away from Ricky, her boyfriend, while he turned very red. One look at all the people staring, and he ran away as fast as he could. Jaarin noticed Henry and Rika, who were staring at her.

"Hi Henry... On a date?"

"Yes, kind of... What was that all about?"

"Oh, nothing... He was just... Coming on too strong..."

"Right... Well, what you did, that was smart."

"Thanks!" She smiled. "But I don't need your opinon." And with that, she walked off to sit somewhere else.

"Okay... Are we watching the movie now?" Rika asked.

"I guess so, but I'd say it's almost over by now, and we have no hope of following the plot very much."

And, as he had predicted, the movie ended and the ending credits came up within a few minutes.

"Huh, you were right. Wanna go back to the park?"

"Yeah, sure."

* * *

On the way to the park, they ran into Takato. "Hi Henry, hi Rika!"

"Hi."

"Are you guys on a date?"

Rika blushed, and so did Henry, but only slightly. "Yeah." Rika said, looking away.

"Well I hope you guys have fun!" Takato said, and he kept on walking.

Rika looked on after him, wishing he had stayed a bit longer. She shook her head to try and rid herself of those thoughts. Henry noticed this, and asked her if she was okay.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to get rid of annoying thoughts."

Henry smiled. "Okay. So, let's go."

* * *

They stopped when they got to some benches, and they sat down. Rika sighed, and started thinking. Henry started thinking too.

"Why do I have to like Takato?" Rika thought to herself. "He's not that great, but he's making me think and act so weird... Why does it have to be like this? Why couldn't I just not like anyone? Life is easy like that. (sigh)"

"Why am I so sad? I feel so hurt... I mean, I didn't even like Rika, she just asked me out, she used me, so what? But... It's just... I'm so upset. (sigh) Every time I say she _used_ me, it sounds so... Bad, makes me almost feel like crying..."

Rika looked at Henry. He looked upset, almost like he wanted to cry. Pity and guilt over making him feel that way overwhelmed her.

"Henry... I'm sorry. I know you're upset that the only reason I asked you out was to try and make Takato notice me. I hope you're not _too_ upset. I don't want to make you cry..."

Henry wiped his eyes and blushed slightly. "I'm not crying, and I'm not gonna cry." He tried to smile. "It's okay, I don't mind. Much. It's alright, except, it's for nothing. It's not going to work, and Takato isn't going to notice you unless you talk to him or something like that."

Rika nodded. "I know. It's just- I shouldn't like him, it's not like me, and it's making me act weird and do stupid things like ask you out- no offence, and I just wish I didn't like him."

"I know how you feel. I'm kinda upset about you asking me out and not meaning it, and I know I shouldn't be. It's not like you did it specifically to hurt me or anything. But, I suppose if we can't change our feelings, we might as well accept them."

"Yeah, I guess... I think... I think I'll tell Takato I like him. Tomorrow."

Henry smiled at her. "That's good. I want you to be happy."

"Hey, what time is it?"

"Quarter to eight."

"Wanna walk me home?"

"Uh..."

"Not as a couple, just as friends, like. Do you want to?"

"Yeah, sure."

So, they walked to Rika's house, and stopped at her gate.

"Bye then."

"Bye."

Henry walked away, and Rika went into her house.

* * *

Wow... That was a long chapter, I have actually _never_ written a chapter this long before...

Terriermon: I've seen longer.

Me: Yes, well it's long for _me_.

Lopmon: Well done I guess.

Me: Not really... I'd say it's repetitive, or out of character, or it doesn't make any sense. By the way, please review people. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, tell me what I'm doing right, whatever. And apparently this month, 44 people have read this, so why aren't you reviewing? Come on people, _please_ review. Anyways, the next chapter will be up at some point, soon-ish. Anyways, bye-bye!


	4. At school

Hi people!!!

Terriermon: Why are you so excited?

Me: I have _six_ reviews now!!

Lopmon: Well done!

Terriermon: Only six?

Me: Oh, be quiet, for me that's a lot. My last story got 2 reviews, and the one before that got... wait, let me check... Hey, it got 12. Well, anyway. So thanks so much to Raakshii and duckie lover 151 for reviewing! And just so everyone knows, request just about anything for this story, and I'll do it. I want this story to be confusing, so it's fine if I end up with lots of pairings that contradict each other. And people do actually like it when we all talk, Terriermon, Lopmon.

Terriermon: (groans) You mean I have to _talk_ to you and Lopmon again now? Aww...

Lopmon: So, what are we talking about?

Me: Umm... Hey look, it isn't raining!

Lopmon: When was it?

Me: When I was outside.

Terriermon: What's this chapter going to be about?

Me: Um, that depends... What happened at the end of the last chapter?

Terriermon: You wrote it _yesterday_. How can you not remember?

Me: I don't know! Anyways, I think Rika said she was going to ask Takato out, which means I can't change the POV for this chapter like I had wanted to.

Lopmon: Yes you can. I'm sure other people do that.

Me: Yes, indeed they do. Huh, I guess I can do it then. Yeah... It all makes sense now...

Terriermon: Why are you writing this while listening to depressing music?

Me: My music is _not_ depressing! Well, it's not actually _mine_, I just listen to it, but it's not depressing, it's cool!

Lopmon: It's about pain being better than numbness.

Me: Which it is!

Lopmon: Which is depressing.

Me: No it isn't! Besides, not all my music is depressing, listen to this song.

Terriermon: I hate Kidzbop.

Me: How about we stop arguing about music and I write the chapter before I forget what I want to do.

Terriermon: I bet you've already forgot.

Me: Yes I have, but who cares. Wait! Oh no, never mind.

Lopmon: Okay... Are gonna start writing the chapter now?

Me: Good idea.

* * *

It was a Monday morning, and all the kids in the city were getting ready for school. All the tamers (except Suzie, Ai, Mako, and Ryo) are now in the same class, as Henry and Rika got transferred. However, the tamer in particular we are focusing on, is Kazu Shioda.

As he was lying in bed, his alarm clock went off, he ignored it, the usual. Then he remembered that he was going to meet up with Takato, Henry and Kenta in the park to play digimon cards before school. Even though he'd been doing it for over two years, he still couldn't remember to get up early enough.

* * *

When he got there, they were talking and laughing.

"Hey guys, whatcha talking about?"

Takto and Kenta looked at each other. "Oh just... Stuff." Takato said, looking away slightly.

"Dude, be more specific. What kinda stuff?"

"A rumor." Kenta replied.

"What?"

"Well," Henry said, "There's a thing going around that... That you put a camera up in Ayaka's bedroom, and watch videos of her at night. I'm sure it's not-"

"Why would I do that?!" Kazu yelled, interrupting Henry mid-sentence. "If was gonna watch video footage of girls changing, 1, it would be on the internet, and 2, it would _not_ be Ayaka. It would be _anyone_ but Ayaka."

"I'd say she started the rumor herself to try an make people not like you, anyway." Takato said.

"Wait, what was that you said about girls changing on the internet?" Kenta asked.

"Yeah," Kazu laughed, "You'd want to know, wouldn't you, you pervert."

Kenta blushed. "Hey I was just wondering, it's not like I want to see it or anything."

"_Anyway,_" Henry interrupted, "Didn't we come here to play digimon cards? And if we're not gonna do that, could we at least talk about something more... _Appropriate_?"

"Yeah, like your date with Rika yesterday!" Takato said.

Kazu and Kenta stared. "You went on a _date_? With _Rika?"_

"And you didn't get killed?"

Henry blushed. "Well... It-it wasn't _really _a _date_... Uh... Hey, what time is it, I bet we're late!"

Kazu laughed. "Ha! You're not getting out of it _that_ easy." He looked at his watch though. It said 8:25, they had to be in school by 8:30. "Oh damn it, we _are _late! Come on guys, let's go! But I expect to hear _all_ about your _date_ later!"

And so they ran to school, making it into the classroom a second before the bell rang. They sat down, Kazu and Kenta next to each other, Takato next to Jeri, Henry next to Ayaka, as all those seats were the only ones free.

Jeri giggled when Takato sat down. He whispered to her. "What? What's so funny?"

She whispered back. "All of you arriving at the same time, the second the bell rings." She giggled more, except quieter, as their teacher had walked in.

"Alright, all of you. Be quiet. Takato, Jeri, stop talking." As Ms Asagi began a maths lesson, Henry passed a note to Ayaka.

"The thing about Kazu and the camera, did you make that up?"

She passed a note back. "_Maybe, why?"_

"Just wondering. He said if he was going to spy on any girls at night, it wouldn't be you. It would be anyone but you."

"_So he would spy on other girls... Hmm..."_

"So why did you make it up?"

"_To make him look bad. And it is plausible."_

"Okay then."

They stopped passing notes, and concentrated on the lesson.

Eventually, lunch came around, and everyone went outside.

Rika went over to Takato, who was talking to Kazu, and dragged him into a corner.

"Gogglehead."

"Um, yeah. What?"

Rika blushed. "Will you go out with me?"

Takato looked stunned, and blinked a few times while trying to comprehend what she had just said.

"What? But... Don't you like Henry? Isn't that two-timing?"

"No, I don't like him. I asked him out because- Well, ask Jeri about it. Anyway, I like you. Will you go out with me later today?" She blushed very deeply. She really hoped he would say yes, but it annoyed her that her happiness depended so much on his answer.

"W-well, uh... Um, uh, w-well, y-you see... Uh... Do I have to answer now?"

"Yes."

"Is it okay if I'm blunt about it?"

Her heart sank. He was going to say no, she just knew it. She tried to hide the disappointment in her voice, but failed. "Yeah, whatever."

"Okay. Sorry... It's just... Well... No. I like Jeri... Sorry. I hope you're not too sad..."

Rika felt like her heart had been smashed into pieces. She felt like she was going to cry. "I'm not sad, why would I care what _you_ think?" She screamed the last bit, and yelled even more. "Why would I even _want _to go out with someone like _you_?! I hate you! And I hate Jeri! And... I... Just go away and leave me alone!" She glared at him, but she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to suppress them.

"You he-heard me, (sob) just go away! (sob)" She leaned on the wall and cried into it. There was no point trying not to cry anymore, because it just wasn't going to work.

Takato wished he hadn't said anything, and really wanted to make her feel better. But, there was nothing he could do now, except to go away like she told him to. As he walked away from her, he thought abut what had just transpired.

"Rika asked me out... And I said no... And now she's upset and hates me and Jeri... (sigh) I suppose it was kind of mean to just say no like that, but if don't like her that way, then what's the point? Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that I like Jeri... Or maybe... Um... (sigh) Why does it all have to be so hard?" He came out of his thoughts, and noticd Jeri talking to Ayaka and Miki. He went over to her.

"Hey Jeri, can I talk to you for a minute?" Ayaka and Miki giggled, but Jeri seemed almost oblivious to it.

"Of course! What about?"

"Um... Just come with me."

The two of them walked a bit away, and Takato started talking.

"It's just, you see, Rika asked me out, and I asked her didn't she like Henry, because she was on a date with him yesterday, and she said no, and to ask you about it."

"Oh, you see, she likes you, and asked me how to get you to notice her. So I told her to go out with some other boy and you'd realise what you were missing, and ask her out. So what did you say?"

"Well firstly, Jeri, that kind of thing only works in movies, not even. And I said no, because I like someone else, and now she hates me, and you, and she's crying."

"Takato! How could you do something like that?!"

"Sorry. But if I don't like her that way, then what would be the point?"

"Okay... Good point, I guess. I'll go comfort Rika, but first, who is it that you like? I could set you up with her!"

"Um... Well, considering what happened when you tried to set Rika up with me... I don't think that's such a great idea..."

"Aw, okay. Bye then! Tell the girls what happened and where I'm going!"

"Okay..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Jeri walked up to Rika, who was done crying and sitting on the ground.

"Hi Rika!"

"Hi... This is all your fault!" She stood up. "I asked Takato out, and he said no!"

"I'm sorry... There _are_ other boys out there, but I'm sure that doesn't help." Jeri smiled. "If you want, I could try and convince him to-"

"No." Rika interrupted, "It's fine. You're right, there _are_ other boys out there, and it's not like they matter anyway. (sigh) Besides, he'll regret saying no to me someday..."

"Exactly! So don't worry, everything will be just fine!"

Lunch ended and everybody went back inside. Everyone sat down, and Ayaka sat next to Kazu, pretending she didn't know he was there. She stared at the clock until Ms. Asagi started talking, then looked at Kazu who was giving her a weird look.

She passed him a note.

"What? It's not like I sat next to you on purpose. I'd move if I could."

He replied; "_Yeah right, you knew exactly what you were doing when you sat here."_

"Answer me this then, why would I want to be next to you?"

"_... How am I supposed to know?! You're a girl, girls are weird!"_

"You like me sitting next to you, don't you?"

"_If I liked it, I wouldn't have said anything! Besides, you're the one that likes it, you sat here."_

"How could you possibly accuse me of wanting to sit next to you?! You're crazy!"

And with that, she put her hand up.

"Yes Ayaka? I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with world war two, but go on."

"Can I swap places with somebody? Kazu's being a pervert."

"No I'm not!"

"Yeah you are!"

"No I'm not!

"Yeah you are!"

"Prove it."

"How am I supposed to prove you touched me?"

"I didn't touch you!!"

"Yeah you did!"

"No I didn't!"

"Prove it!"

At this point, the entire class was staring at them, and Ms. Asagi had had enough of it.

"Stop arguing, both of you! Kazu, stand out in the hall,"

"Why me?!"

"Be quiet. And Ayaka, go to fifth class, and make sure to tell them you're in trouble. The teacher will ask how severe, you say 3 out of 10."

Both Kazu and Ayaka knew they had been defeated, and Kazu went out into the hallway, as Ayaka made her way to fifth class.

"Now class, where were we? Ah yes, world war two, and you had better take notes on this, there'll be a test next week."

The history lesson went on for another tediously slow hour, until Ms. Asagi told Kazu he could come back in, and asked Jeri to retrieve Ayaka.

The schoolday went on for another couple of hours, until finally it ended. Everyone began to make their way home, but Ayaka stopped Henry.

"Give me Kazu's phone number or I'll make you sorry."

"Okay then..." He gave her Kazu's number.

"Why?"

"So I can prank call him and put his number on the internet, duh." But there was a tone of uncertainty in her voice as she said that. Henry knew better than to believe her, but didn't say anything.

"Okay. And don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"Good."

The two parted ways, and Ayaka celebrated silently. "Yes! I've got his number! Not like that's really great or anything. I'll call him today, and I'll call somone else on another phone, and put them next to each other. Ha! That'll be fun." She smiled to herself as she walked home.

* * *

And that's the end of that chapter!

Terriermon: Your chapters are getting longer and longer, that's scary.

Me: Not scary, good! But I was writing for about an hour or two straight, that can't be good for me...

Lopmon: Oh well. At least the story is turning out well.

Me: Yeah, I might actually be able to write something longer than five chapters!

Lopmon: The way it's going it sure seems like it, considering this is chapter four and the story is nowhere near being ended or resolved.

Me: Yay!!! Let's celebrate! Well, we can celebrate if/when I manage 6 or 7 chapters.

Terriermon: Everything's been going right for you recently, hasn't it?

Me: Yeah... I'm lucky!

Terriermon: Well give us some of your luck!

Me: I don't know how...

Terriermon: Aww...

Lopmon: It doesn't matter.

Terriermon: Well that's fine for _you_ to say.

Me: That reminds me, when people were passing notes, things are underlined for emphasis. Like, instead of italics. Anyways, please review! And the next chapter should be up tomorrow, or whenever I get a chance. (Which will probably be tomorrow) So, bye!


	5. Lost part one

Hi again everyone! Welcome to... Chapter 5! Yay!

Terriermon: I just realised something...

Me: That I'm hyper?

Terriermon: That too, but no, every time you start writing, you change the font and letter size. Why? It's not like it shows up on the site or anything.

Me: True, but I like it like this.

Terriermon: You're crazy.

Me: You mean you just figured that out?

Lopmon: Why don't we all stop arguing, calm down, and you can thank the reviewers.

Me: Great idea! Thanks lots to duckie lover 151, and Raakshii for reviewing! And I know someday I _will_ get more reviewers!

Terriermon: Yeah, like _someday_ your hair will be straight.

Me: Exactly!

Lopmon: He was being sarcastic...

Me: When I'm 15 or some age like that, I'll get my hair permanently straightened. Anyways, someday my stories will be extremely popular. Now that we've got that settled, uh... Now what?

Terriermon: You can tell us how many people according to the people-counter-thingy, have read this story so far.

Me: Great idea! Okay... 76!!! That's 32 more than whenever I last checked! This is so cool!

Lopmon: What's this chapter going to be about?

Me: Good question. I should go back and see what happened in the last chapter...

Lopmon: It ended with Ayaka getting Kazu's phone number and being a bit too happy about it.

Me: Oh yeah, _now_ I remember what I was gonna do...

Terriermon: What?

Me: You'll see, you'll _all_ see! (starts laughing maniacally)

Lopmon: Uh... Can you not do that? You're starting to scare me.

Me: Sorry. As we established earlier, I'm kinda hyper.

Lopmon: Are we gonna start the chapter?

Me: You bet!

* * *

Ayaka got home, and went up to her room. She thought vaguely about doing her homework, but decided against it. After all, she had until Friday. She picked up an old phone she had found in the attic a while ago but still worked somehow, and dialled Kazu's number. While it was ringing, she debated with herself who else to call. Her number was hidden, so she could call anyone and they wouldn't know it was her. She decided to call the fire department. The fact that doing so was illegal crossed her mind briefly, but she paid no attention to it. When both people had answered, she held the phones up to each other, one of them upside down.

"_Hello, Shinjuku fire department. Where is your fire?"_

"I don't have a fire, why'd you call me?"

"_Young man, prank calling emergency services is illegal, I hope you know that."_

"What?! But I'm _not_ prank calling you! You called me! Or someone did!"

"_Of course. Now tell me your name, and this will be reported to your parents."_

"But I didn't do anything!"

"_Tell me your name!"_

"Kazu Shioda, but I didn't do anything, I swear!"

Ayaka had to try so hard not to laugh, this was hilarious. She felt a slight bit of guilt for the trouble Kazu was going to get into, but she pushed it away. Surely it didn't matter to her what trouble Kazu got himself into?

"_But,"_ Said a voice in her head, "_He's not getting himself into trouble, _you're_ getting him into it."_

"Shut up crazy voice!" She thought to herself, as she resumed listening to the chaos on the phones.

"Really, I didn't do it! Please don't tell my parents, they'll kill me! Which would be bad enough if there _was_ a reason, but I'm telling you, I didn't do anything! Someone probably called me and you and held the phones up to each other!"

"_Have you any proof such a thing is even possible?"_

"Yes! Uh... kinda..."

"_Well proof or otherwise, the fact remains that you are wasting the valuable time of the fire department, and this matter shall be handed over to the police and your parents, good day."_

And with that, they hung up. Kazu was left on the line.

"I know you're there, whoever you are. And I hate you. I'm gonna get in _so_ much trouble, for something I didn't even do! You must be _some_ evil, cold-hearted person to do something like that. Bye." And he hung up.

Ayaka started laughing hysterically, now that it was safe to do so. Her laughter died out quite quickly however, as she remembered what Kazu said to her.

"But he hates me anyway," She thought, "What difference does it make if he has a reason now? And a better question, how do I make whatever part of me that _cares_ for some reason shut up?! (sigh) Stupid Kazu, it's all his fault. I don't remember what he did, but it's _all_ _his_ fault."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Rika was at her house, doing her homework, sure, she had all week to do it, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do. The thought crossed her mind that if she did all her homework _now_, she'd have nothing to do later in the week. But she pushed that thought away.

"What am I thinking? I _do_ have a social life, and if I'm really bored... Um... Well, I've _definitely_ got a social life. ...But what made me think I didn't? Maybe what happened today... But makes no sense..."

She turned her attention away from the maths she was doing to think about that for a minute. After a while, she gave up, and resumed her homework.

When she decided to stop, she went and turned on the TV. Renamon appeared next to her.

"Hi Renamon." Rika said boredly.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, of course it is, why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, I saw what happened earlier, with you and Takato-"

"And it's none of your business!" Rika yelled, standing up.

"I'm sorry Rika, it's just-"

"And don't make excuses, I wish you would just quit spying on me, it's _my_ life, not yours! Get your own!" And with that, she sat down again and changed the channel.

"If it's any consolation, your mother told me to do it, it wasn't my idea." Renamon said as she sat next to Rika.

"Oh great, so now you're taking _her_ orders instead of mine." Rika realised that sounded kind of bad, but she wasn't about to take it back.

"We all just want to keep you safe, and make sure nothing bad happens to you. Maybe I do overdo it a bit with watching you so much."

"You can't protect me forever, none of you can. So you might as well just let me be now. Besides, what are you gonna do, rewind time? You can't stop things from happening. Just leave me alone for a while, okay?"

"Alright." And Renamon disappeared.

Rika sighed. She wished that she could handle that sort of thing better. She didn't want to lose her temper like that, it just happened. "No wonder Gogglehead doesn't like me..." She thought, "How could anyone like me? I'm just a bitch that yells all the time..."

She closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

* * *

(Dream scene)

Rika was walking down the street. It was dark out, but the moonlight lit the night up enough for her to see clearly. She noticed she was carrying a gun. "Cool. Maybe I can shoot people." Suddenly, the urge to kill overwhelmed her, and she started running, looking for people. She saw Jeri. "Hi Rika!" Jeri waved at her.

Rika shot her in the head. "Serves you right for being such a terrible matchmaker, the world's better off without you!" She yelled, as she ran.

She felt the last traces of sanity, common sense, and remorse leaving her. She kept running, and saw Takato. Before he could even say anything, she shot him. She watched him bleed to death, and laughed.

"That's what you get for saying no to me!!" She ran more, and saw her mother, she shot her too.

"Serves you right mom! Only I tell Renamon what to do!"

She ran even more and saw Renamon. "Rika, please don't shoot me."

Her mind hardly even registered the request before she shot Renamon.

"And that's for spying on me all the time!"

She kept running, and pretty much the same process was repeated on most of the people she knew, Henry, Kazu, Kenta, her grandmother, Ayaka, Miki, and more.

When her shooting spree was over, she looked at the scene of devastation before her and laughed. Until her common sense came back. Then she realised, she had just _murdered_ everyone she knew. And she had _laughed_ about it. She was all alone now, and it was _all her fault_. She couldn't block out the images, the pleas, the gunshots, the fact that she would be alone forever, and would have to live with this for the rest of her life. She collapsed onto the ground and started crying. Then she knew what to do, she held the gun up to her head, and fired it.

(End dream scene)

* * *

She woke up suddenly. "Oh good, that was just a dream..." She realised her face was wet. "I cried in my sleep," She thought, "How pathetic is that?" She wiped her eyes and wondered what time it was. She went into the kitchen, the clock said 18:03, a bit past six. She decided she might as well go out while she could, so she went out and started walking, not really knowing or caring where she was going.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Kazu's day was getting worse and worse. At first it wasn't too bad, a rumor about him putting up a camera in Ayaka's bedroom, being made stand out in the hall over Ayaka passing him notes and lying about it, but _now_, he was in some sort of trouble with the _police_ over something he didn't even do!

"I suppose it'd be kinda cool if I actually _did_ do anything, but I didn't! Stupid fire department guy, not knowing that I was _obviously_ telling the truth! (sigh) Whoever did this, I'll make them pay."

He was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn't notice a lampost, and walked straight into it. "Great, just what I need." He muttered, as he got up. He noticed Rika walking by.

"Hi Rika!" He waved at her, while she glared back.

"I don't want to talk to you. Today is the worst day of my life."

"Well, I bet it's not half as bad as mine!"

"Why, what happened to you?" The two of them started walking together, not in any particular direction, just walking.

Kazu replied to Rika's question. "Well let's see, first, there's some rumor going around that I put a camera in Ayaka's bedroom, and for the record, it's _not_ true."

"Yeah, I know. She came up with it."

"And second, well, you saw what happened with me and Ayaka in class today, and _she_ started that by passing me a note! And then she said I was being a pervert!"

Rika laughed at the memory. "Is that it?"

"No! _Then_, when I got home, someone called me, put me on to the _fire department_, and then they were just like: 'Don't you know it's illegal to prank call emergency services? We're telling the police!' And they just wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't do anything! So I bet my day was _way_ worse than yours!"

Rika thought for minute. "You know, I think you're right, you're day _was_ worse than mine."

"Well what happened to you, anyway?"

"Can't tell you."

"Aw, come on, please?"

"Well... Since you said please... No."

"But that's not fair! I told you what happened to me!"

"So?"

"Fine, let me guess... Henry broke up with you?"

"No, where'd you even come up with that?"

"Didn't you go on a date with him yesterday?"

"Yeah... Who told you?"

"Takato."

"Oh, I hate him _so_ much right now..."

Kazu laughed. "So come on, what _did_ happen? I promise I won't tell _anyone, _even if they..." He paused to think of a suitable torture method.

"Even if they... Make me kiss Ayaka, I won't tell. So will you tell me?"

Rika sighed. She supposed telling him couldn't be _that_ bad, at least if he did spread it it would get around how bad a matchmaker Jeri was.

"Alright, fine. I'll tell you. First I'll tell you, I don't like Henry. I only went out with him because Jeri told me to."

"Well that kinda guarantees bad things."

"Yeah. And don't interrupt me! Anyway, so you see, today, at school," She started blushing, and took a deep breath to try and make herself calm down.

"I asked Takato out-"

"Wow, that _is_ bad!"

Rika glared at him. "Do you want me to tell you or not? Anyway, I asked him out, and he said no. To make it worse, then he wouldn't go away, he just kept saying sorry. Eventually he went away, then Jeri came over and told me there were other boys in the world, I kinda knew that already, since I went on a date with one _yesterday_, and then at home, Renamon tried to make me talk about it, and I got into a fight with her, and then I fell asleep."

She had delibirately left out her dream, and the fact that she cried in her sleep and after Takato said no to her.

"What's so bad about falling asleep?"

"It's a waste of time that I could be using to do other things."

"Oh. Well, I dunno, maybe we're even, being rejected is bad, but I'm in trouble with the police."

"Well, being in trouble with the police is kinda cool."

"Yeah, well it would be if I had actually _done anything_. But I didn't, they just kinda have it in for me."

"The police have it in for you? Trust me, that's even cooler. You might get on the news or something."

"Yeah, that _would_ be cool, actually!" Kazu smiled.

Rika would have smiled, but then she remembered she wasn't supposed to like who she was talking to, so she didn't.

Kazu stopped walking. "Hey, where are we?"

Rika looked around. They _had_ been walking and talking for quite a while now, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't figure out where they were.

"That's a good question..." She didn't recognise the place at all. How long had they been walking for?

"How are we gonna get back? What if we get killed or something? What if-"

"Shut up Kazu! This is bad enough as it is, I don't need you freaking yourself out with questions like that."

"Sorry. But-"

"No buts!"

Kazu looked down at the ground. He figured that shutting up would be the best option at the moment, as Rika was acting more abrupt than usual, and would probably kill him if he said anything more.

"Then again, if she kills me, I won't be in trouble..." He pondered that for a minute, and decided that living would probably be the better option.

"So, what do you think we should do?" Rika asked.

"I dunno, ask someone for directions?"

"Wow, a boy wanting to ask for directions. _You_ wanting to ask for directions!"

"Anyway, why don't we like, do it?"

"Yeah, but this place is deserted!"

Kazu looked around. "Oh yeah... Well, maybe that wasn't the best idea ever, hey, couldn't you just get Renamon to like, teleport us back?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so!"

"Okay, sorry... How about... Uh... Okay, I'm out of ideas. Have you got any?"

"Walk in the direction we came from, and if we find some people ask them for directions?"

Kazu stared at her in awe. "That's a _really_ good idea! Yay! We aren't gonna die after all!"

"Well, I can't make any promises for _you_, especially if you keep this up..."

He stopped celebrating. "Sorry. Please don't kill me."

Before she could reply, she couldn't help but be reminded of her dream, and all the people begging her not to kill them. She felt really guilty, even though she knew it didn't make sense to.

"No, I'm sorry. It's okay, I didn't mean it."

"Okay then..." Kazu wondered, what had got into her? Yelling and threatening him one minute, being overly sorry the next. Oh well, this was better than her killing him.

* * *

Yay! Chapter over!

Terriermon: You are _too_ happy.

Me: Yeah I know.

Lopmon: Why is the text pink?

Me: Yeah, I accidentally got it stuck like that... Besides, it's not gonna show up on the site, and people are gonna think we're crazy...

Terriermon: Speaking of crazy, what kind of a chapter is this?! For you, this is insane! Swearing and violence! Like, real swearing and violence! Murder!

Me: It was _one_ bad word, and a shooting dream scene. It's not that bad! Although, for _me_, yeah, it is pretty bad.

Lopmon: Well, maybe it's a good sign... Oh who am I kidding, you'll be writing M rated things next.

Me: Nuh-uh, I'm not old enough to read them yet, so how could I write them? Anyways, discussion over. Please review people! Next chapter should be up sometime next week. Bye-bye!


	6. Lost Pt 2

Hi everyone! Welcome to chapter 6!

Terriermon: Wow... The sixth chapter... That's... Wow...

Lopmon: Yeah, he's right, that's amazing for you.

Me: Yay! And you're right, whether you look at words or chapters, this is the longest thing I've ever written. Cool!

Terriermon: Party time?

Me: Maybe. Well, okay then. Party time!!! Yay!!! ( gets balloons, cookies, and streamers out of nowhere )

Lopmon: That's kinda random...

Me: I know! Free cookie and balloon for everyone that reviews! ( Well, imaginary cookie and balloon ) And extra ones for Raashii and duckie lover 151 who have stuck with me pretty much all the way here. Yay them!

Lopmon: Weird way to thank reviewers...

Me: Oh well.

Terriermon: You're extra crazy today... Why?

Me: ... You don't need to know...

Terriermon: I definitely need to start stalking you again.

Me: And _you _think_ I'm_ weird?

Terriermon: Sure do.

Lopmon: Anyway, do you wanna start the chapter now?

Me: Yeah, sure. And you guys can party.

Terriermon: Yay, party!

* * *

We return to Rika and Kazu, who are lost.

"So..." Kazu said, "Are we gonna start trying to get back now, or are you just gonna keep spacing out?"

Rika, who had been staring into space, possibly deep in thought, looked at him. "Oh yeah. Let's go."

And so they set off, in the direction from which they came. After walking for about 15 minutes, they realised that all the streets looked _exactly_ the same.

"Where are we? It looks like where we started, and where we were a minute ago, and before that..." Kazu asked.

"How am I supposed to know? Maybe it's some sort of illusion or something, or a bizarre town with identical streets and no people. Maybe if we don't walk on the road, but go in to a side alley or something."

Kazu gave her a weird look. "Do you _know_ what kind of people hang out in alleys?"

"We'll be fine. And it's pretty much our only chance. Now come on." She took him by the arm and dragged him into the alleyway.

They walked for a while, and never reached any sort of wall or end. Kazu was beginning to freak out at this point.

"Rika? Are we gonna, you know, ever get out of here?" The fear in his voice was evident.

"Just calm down, we'll be fine." She looked at Kazu and noticed that he was probably going to have some sort of panic attack.

"Really, we'll be fine. Why are you so afraid?" She only got a look full of badly hidden fear in response.

"(sigh) What is wrong with you? Do you want me to hold your hand or something? Can't walk by yourself, is that it?"

"Can I take you up on that offer?"

"What? Holding your hand? I was being sarcastic." Rika said, as she gave him a strange look. But, she decided to compromise and hold his wrist. As soon as she touched him she felt him relax, and he didn't look half as afraid.

"So, now what? Keep walking?" Kazu asked.

"I dunno... Let's stop for the moment, I'll try and contact Renamon telepathically. _"Renamon? Where are you?"_

She got no response, so she looked at her digivice, which, when she tried to find Renamon's signal, said: "Out of range" She didn't know whether it meant her or Renamon.

"Well?" Kazu asked.

"Nothing. And the digivice says out of range. I'll try calling somebody." She took her phone out, wondering why neither of them had thought of it earlier. Her phone was off and wouldn't turn on.

"Is it working?"

"No. It won't turn on, it must be out of batteries or something." Even though she knew full well that she had charged it last night. But she didn't want Kazu to freak out any more, he was bad enough when he _wasn't _panicking.

"Okay, I'll try mine. Hey, it won't turn on either... And I charged it this morning..."

He sounded extremely afraid, and Rika was afraid too. Where were they? And why did it all look identical? Rika looked at Kazu. He literally seemed to be having a panic attack, or something like that.

"Kazu, calm down. Please, this is bad enough as it is, and I'm scared too. I don't need you freaking out."

Kazu kneeled down and started trying to bang his head on the ground. In the end he settled for curling up on the ground. He looked like he was crying, but from where Rika was standing it was hard to tell.

"Why did I have to get stuck with him, of all people?" Rika thought. "Although, I wouldn't have seen him as the type to have a panic attack, and curl up on the ground and cry. I'd have figured that he'd have just... I don't know, been really annoying, and try to hide his fear. Not ask me to hold his hand and then start crying. The more I think about it, the weirder it seems. Maybe someone replaced him with some sort of crybaby clone or something. I just can't get my head around it... Then again, he _is_ having a really bad day, and if he ever gets home he'll be in all sorts of trouble... Yeah, that's probably it." She let the matter go, and the thought briefly crossed her mind that she had said _if_ he gets home. Not when, but if. Was she succumbing to hopelessness, or being realistic? She sighed, and figured that she'd try and get Kazu off the ground and get home first, and think about all this later.

"KAZU!"

Kazu looked up at her, then realised that for the past few minutes, he had been lying on the ground and crying in fear. He blushed and got up.

"I didn't mean to cry, an alien possessed me and made me do it."

"Yeah, right. There's nothing much wrong with freaking out and being afraid and all. It's just extremely inconvenient and it doesn't help us get out of here."

"So... If nothing works, how _are_ we gonna get out of here?"

"Try something we haven't tried yet, I guess. Try your digivice."

"Okay." He took out his digivice, and that too said out of range.

"Out of range."

"Great. Just great. Okay then... (sigh) This is hard. Let's try walking again."

The two of them started walking again, and to their surprise and almost excitement, they noticed that the alley was coming to an end, and they were beginning to reach an opening.

"Cool! We're gonna get out of here!" Kazu yelled as he hugged Rika out of pure happiness to be alive.

"Get off me. Right now."

Kazu blushed and got away from her. "Uh, sorry... I was just-"

"It's okay, just don't do it again."

They continued walking torwards the opening, and found themselves on another street they didn't recognise. But, the good news was, it was different from the other streets they had been on.

"Cool! Any idea where in the world we are?"

But Rika didn't respond at all, because she realised, she _did_ recognise this place. It was the place from her dream. She stared, and blinked. This couldn't be true. If the place from her dream exists, then, well, the rest isn't even worth thinking about...

"Hello? Rika? You there?" Kazu waved his hand in front of her face until she came back to reality.

"Stop that. Anyway, I suppose I should tell you. I had this dream, and I killed everyone."

"Cool."

"_Not _cool. And this is the place it happened in." Understanding crossed Kazu's face as he realised just what that meant.

"Wait, if the _place_ bit of it came true, then... What's gonna happen now?"

"Well since I don't have a gun like I did in my dream, I think... There's gonna be murder, but it's not gonna be me committing it. In fact, me and you are probably gonna be the-"

"Stop! I don't want to hear! If you don't say it, then we won't die!"

Rika didn't really know how to reply to that. She wondered if Kazu truly believed that her not finishing that sentence would really save their lives. She felt almost sorry for him, in a way. But, if they were going to die, they were going to die. Not saying it wouldn't change that. But, it might make their last moments a little less fearful. Rika felt tears welling up in her eyes, and she wiped them away.

"What am I thinking?" She thought. "We aren't going to die. So what, we found a street that looks kinda like the one in my dream, that doesn't mean anything, we're just jumping to conclusions. And I bet we were imagining the all-the-streets-being-the-same thing. Yeah, I bet if we just walk a bit further, we'll get out of here."

"We should really stop being afraid. Well, I should more, but, I'm sure we'll be fine." Kazu said.

"Exactly. I'm glad you realised that too. Now come on, let's keep walking and get out of here."

With that in mind, they started walking again. They both felt a sharp pain, and then everything went black, and then, nothing.

* * *

It was a bit past 9:30 at night, and Rika's mother was getting a bit worried. Usually if Rika was out this late she'd at least answer her phone, but it was going straight to voicemail.

"Renamon." She called worriedly.

"Yes Rumiko?"

"Have you seen Rika anywhere?"

"No. She got very mad at me for supposedly 'spying on her' and I think she went off by herself. I thought it would be best to let her be for a while..."

"She's been gone since about six, it's been 3 hours, and her phone is off. Where do you think she could be?"

"I'll go look for her. Don't worry, I'm sure she'll be fine." Renamon disappeared to go look for Rika, while Rumiko waited anxiously for reassurance that her daughter was okay.

About 25 minutes later, Renamon came back.

"Well, where is she?"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't find her anywhere..."

Rumiko instantly went into panic mode. "Oh my god!!! I'm calling the police, we'll organise a search party, alert the TV and radio stations!"

"Maybe just call the police and other Tamers parents for the moment, and if she's not back by midnight or tomorrow and there is no sign of her, _then_ you can alert TV and radio stations."

Rumiko started to regain her common sense. "Okay." She went over to the phone and started calling people, while Renamon went out to continue looking.

* * *

Okay, chapter over.

Terriermon: That was shorter than what I'd kinda become used to.

Me: Yeah well.

Lopmon: Cliff-hangery, isn't it?

Me: Good. By the way people, please review, and sorry for this chapter being shorter than others and being slightly pointless around the start.

Terriermon: When will the next chapter be up?

Me: Uh... Sometime... Yeah... Probably the day after tommorow... Anyways, bye-bye!


	7. Lost Part 3

Hi everyone! I thought I wouldn't update 'til tomorrow, but I'm doing it today!

Lopmon: So Terriermon, did you get around to stalking Rainbow?

Terriermon: Yes! Yes I did, I'm so glad you asked. Now I can tell you _everything_!

Me: What kind of 'everything' is that then?

Terriermon: You're just scared 'cause I know all your secrets!

Me: Go on then, prove it.

Terriermon: Well, I know you... Uh... Well, I know about the hairbrush, _and_ the pencil... Let's see, what else...

Lopmon: Am I the only confused one here?

Me: I'm sure all the people reading this are just as confused as you, unless I know them... Anyways, the hairbrush is a rumor that an evil person made up about me, some stupid people are convinced it's true, and the pencil, I have this giant pencil, and boys are afraid of it.

Lopmon: You mean a pencil you like, write with?

Me: How many kinds of pencils are there? And yes.

Lopmon: Just... Boys are afraid of it, what's up with that?

Me: They're crazy, that's why.

Terriermon: I know more!

Me: (laughs) Okay then, these "secrets" aren't very bad.

Terriermon: Well this one is! You fancy that guy who sits next to that girl who sits next to that guy you sit next to!

Lopmon: You lost me...

Me: (shows Lopmon a map of my class and points to the person) It's that person there.

Lopmon: Oh. Does he like you?

Me: ... How am I supposed to know?!

Terriermon: This isn't fair! Lopmon's emarrassing you more than I am, and she's not even trying!

Me: You mustn't be trying hard enough.

Terriermon: I'm trying really hard! (goes off and sulks)

Lopmon: Good, now we're rid of him.

Me: Yeah. Anyways, chapter time now!

* * *

It was Tuesday morning, and there was still no sign of Rika. By this time, all the tamers had been alerted, and got to miss school to have a meeting. Of course, when they got there, they realised Kazu was missing too.

"Hey guy, where's Kazu?" Takato asked.

"Yeah," Kenta said, "I tried to call him, but his phone was off or something."

"Maybe he's with Rika..."

At that moment Ryo, ho had not been there before, came running at full speed into Guilmon's hideout, where they were having the meeting.

"Someone told me that Rika's missing! How long has she been gone for?! Is she okay?!"

Renamon appeared next to him. "She's been missing since about six yesterday, and there's been absolutely no sign of her. Her phone is off, and I've looked all over the city and can't find her. The situation is almost exactly the same with Kazu. In fact, they probably disappeared together."

"Maybe he kidnapped her..." Ryo suggested.

Kenta looked at him. "I kinda doubt it, Kazu's not the kidnapping type, not to mention she wouldn't _still_ be gone if that was the case, she'd probably have gotten away before he even kidnapped her."

Everyone stated their agreement, and thought about what could have happened. After a few minutes, soft crying could be heard. Everyone turned torwards the source, who was Jeri.

"Jeri, are you okay?" Takato asked, putting his arm around her.

"Not really. What if they die? What'll we do without them? And enough people have died already..." With that, she started crying again. Takto hugged her, and tried to comfort her. She then started crying even harder.

"Sorry I'm crying so much, it's just- (sob) If Rika or Kazu were here, Kazu would be teasing you for comforting me, and Rika would probably be telling me to get over it." She wiped her eyes and tried to calm down.

Everyone knew Jeri was right, Rika and Kazu left huge absences when they were gone, as they were both such a big part of the group, or in Kazu's case, such a loud part.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Kazu and Rika woke up slowly.

"Where are we? What happened?"

"How am I supposed to know?!"

They were in a small, bright room. Someone, a digimon, came in. "So, you finally woke up."

Rika scanned the digimon with her digivice. "Blackgatomon, Champion level. Atacks are Lightning paw and Cat's eye hypnotism."

"Something _that_ small knocked us out and brought us here?!" Kazu yelled.

"You bet." Said Blackgatomon, "And I can kill you too." With that, she walked over to them and looked them up and down. "You two don't look very threatening."

"Why are we here?" Rika asked.

"Someone wanted me to bring you to him. We're doing an experiment, and we needed two humans, a boy and a girl. You two happened to conveniently walk by us."

"So who's your leader?"

"That's top secret."

"What kinda experiments are we talking about here? They aren't gonna be painful or anything, are they?" Asked Kazu nervously.

"Depends what you mean by painful." Blackgatomon said teasingly. "You won't _die_. And I'm assuming you don't mind needles."

"What if I do?"

"Then this won't be very fun for you at all, will it?" She smiled mischeviously as Kazu looked at her fearfully.

Rika stood up and walked over to Blackgatomon. "You know I'm way taller than you." She said, and indeed she was, by about 3 feet.

Blackgatomon looked up at her. "Do you think I'm even slightly intimidated by you? Lightning paw!!"

She hit Rika in the leg with her attack, making Rika collaspe to the ground in pain, and from the way she was hit. Ironically, falling down just hurt her even more. Kazu ran over to her.

"Are you okay?"

"What do you think? I just got hit with a powerful attack, at really close range. Would you be okay?!" Rika was in so much pain that she actually had difficulty getting the sentence out.

"You won't be interfering any more now, will you?" Blackgatomon said, smiling.

Kazu sat down next to Rika. "You know, maybe if we just co-operate with the experiments they won't hurt us."

Blackgatomon walked out of the room as they continued talking. "No way am I going to obey a tiny cat. Besides, she didn't hurt me that much."

She tried to stand up, and fell back down. She tried again, and the same thing happened. "Do yuo want me to help you?"

"No! I don't need help!" She fell down again. "Okay, fine, but just a little." Kazu held both her wrists, and helped her up. He noticed she was leaning almost completely to the left.

"You can't lean any weight on your other leg, can you?" Kazu asked doubtfully.

"Yes I can!" She tried to stand normally, but as soon as she leaned even slightly more to the right, she collapsed. Kazu helped her back up.

"I kinda don't think you can..." Rika blushed slightly, mostly because she had been proven wrong, but partially because of the fact that Kazu was touching her.

She mentally berated herself. "That's not something to be thinking about at a time like this! Besides, he's holding my wrists, so what? It's just because I can't really stand up myself... Ugh, stupid Blackgatomon, I think she broke my leg or something..."

Rika made Kazu let go of her, and tried to sit down without hurting herself too much. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly possible, so she hurt herself more.

"Ow..."

Kazu sat down too. "Maybe one of the experiments is healing people..."

"I think it's broken..."

"If it makes you feel any better, it'll be okay."

"Prove it."

"I'll protect you, I promise. If she goes for you again, I'l take the hit." Rika noticed he was completely serious.

She thought to herself. "Why does he care so much about me? He's willing to... Yeah right. He says that now, but I bet he won't do it."

"Kazu, you're an idiot. Think about it, if both of us end up with broken legs, then how will we get home? If she attacks again, I should take all the hits, so there'll only be one injured person."

Kazu looked kind of sad, but hid it quickly. "I guess so..."

Blackgatomon came back in, this time with an Angemon. "Hey! Angemons are supposed to be good!" Kazu yelled. Rika glared at him. "Maybe he _is_ good, you idiot." She whispered, "And don't say _anything_ else, you might get us killed."

"Hey! Listen up!" Blackgatomon yelled.

Angemon started talking. "As Blackgatomon told you, you are here for an experiment. Contrary to what Blackgatomon told you, there will be no needles involved. It is actually quite simple, you will stay in this room, and we'll watch you interact. We've already gathered some information from watching both of you. And Blackgatomon,"

Blackgatomon, who had been playing with her tail out of boredom, looked up at him. "Huh?"

"You are not to injure the humans. I will now have to try and heal the one you attacked."

She tried to look ashamed. "I'm sorry..."

Rika laughed slightly and whispered to Kazu. "She's a faker."

"Yeah, you're right. I wonder if he'll notice."

Angemon looked at Blackgatomon. "You don't mean that."

She looked stunned for a second. "How'd you know? I mean, yes I do."

Rika and Kazu laughed, and Blackgatomon looked embarrassed.

Angemon sighed and picked Blackgatomon up, making Kazu and Rika laugh even more.

"I dn't know if I should punish you or not, I'll see how well you behave and decide later." He put her down, and spoke to Rika and Kazu.

"I'll leave her with both of you. Don't worry, you'll be allowed go home in a few hours. And I'll heal you when the experiment is over." He then walked out of the room, leaving the three alone.

Kazu walked over to Blackgatomon, and sat down. She glared at him. "If you get punished, what'll happen?"

"I don't know, I'm sure he won't kill or hurt me, just do something I don't like, like put me in water. Why?"

"I was wondering if I should ask him to punish you or not. I think I will."

"Why? That girl's annoying, she deserved it."

"She's not that bad, and she did _not_ deserve it!"

"I _could_ just do the same to you, you know."

"Yeah, but then you'd get punished for sure."

"You know what?" She said, standing up. "I don't care. Lightning paw!!" As Kazu was still sitting down, her attack hit him in the shoulder.

"Wow, that _does_ hurt." He thought. "No wonder Rika couldn't stand."

Rika tried to go over, but her leg hurt too much. "Damn it." She thought. "I wish I could go over, give that stupid little Blackgatomon a piece of my mind. (sigh) I'm sure I'll manage somehow..."

But before she could try to move, Kazu came over to her, holding his shoulder. "Are you okay?" She asked.

"Yeah, just in agony. I'm fine really." He sat down and tried not to let all the pain show. He grimaced. It hurt a _lot_.

"You sure you're okay?"

"No! I'm about as okay as you are, except worse, 'cause I keep moving it by accident and I can't help it!" He was almost in tears by now. Rika had no idea what to do, if she even touched him she'd probably make it worse, but he actually was crying now...

"Come on, don't cry..." As she had no idea what to do, but wanted to make him better, she leaned over and hugged him gently. She felt him flinch as she touched him, but then he relaxed. Then he realised that this was kind of awkward...

"Why are you hugging me? Not that I want you to stop or anything, it actually makes the pain go away, but why?"

"I don't know really... I just didn't want you to be upset and in pain, and I didn't know what else to do... And you better not tell anyone."

"I won't."

* * *

(Back with the Tamers)

The Tamers were in Hypnos, with Yamaki, and Rika's and Kazu's parents. Yamaki was trying to track Rika and Kazu's digivices on a scanner, and not succeeding.

"Have you found her yet?!" Rumiko asked.

"No, not yet. I'm sorry, but there's nothing else we can really do."

"What do you mean, not _yet_?" Henry asked. "You've been trying to find them for nearly an hour, and you've had no luck. I don't understand how you could possibly find them now, if there's been absolutely no sign of them since yesterday."

"I suppose so, the 'yet' is just a formality really. But they can't have simply been wiped off the face of the earth! Unless they're in the digital world..." He started typing codes into the computer, and it looked like he would be doing that for a while.

"I'm sure they'll be back soon." Jeri said.

Everyone else smiled at her optimism, and hoped she was right.

* * *

Okay, end of chapter!

Terriermon: Aww... You're no fun!

Me: Wait... You actually _like_ my writing?

Terriermon: ... No. (blushes and looks away)

Lopmon: Aw, that's so cute!

Terriermon: Shut up! (runs away)

Me and Lopmon: Aww... That's so cute!

Me: What do you think?

Lopmon: I don't know, but it's cute!

Me: Too true. Anyways, chapter officially over, please review!


	8. Getting back

Hi again everyone!

Terriermon: Where've you been for the last few days?

Me: On a school trip, away from all society, electricity, and common sense.

Lopmon: It can't have been that bad.

Me: Oh it wasn't bad, just _really_ random at some points. For instance, somebody said 'cool', someone else interpeted it as 'ignorant'. That sort of thing happened a good few times a day.

Lopmon: Okay, that was pretty weird...

Me: Weird is an understatement. Have you ever been woken up at five thirty am by an old lady screaming at you? Or at six am by one of your friends groaning loudly in her sleep?

Terriermon: That was one _strange_ school trip...

Me: You bet! Unfortunately, I've kinda forgotten what was happening in the story...

Terriermon: Introduce some new characters and make another side-plot!

Me: I have enough side-plots! At least one or two! I'll just read over it... I hope whoever was reading my story before didn't decide never to read it again because I went so long without updating...

Lopmon: It's been around a week. Some people go literally years without updating.

Me: Oh yeah... I think I'll start the chapter now.

* * *

It was Tuesday evening, and Rika and Kazu were still trapped in the mysterious room, and had been there for hours. They had discovered positions in which they weren't in pain, so now their only problem was boredom. They were attempting to play Eye spy, but it wasn't going too well.

"I give up. What the hell is there that you can see that begins with P?" Rika asked exasperatedly.

"Penguin!"

"There aren't any penguins in here you idiot!"

"So? That doesn't mean I can't see them!"

"Great. I'm stuck in a room with someone who sees imaginary _penguins_!"

Kazu started laughing hysterically, but stopped when his shoulder began hurting him again. "Ow. Ha ha, you said penguin!" With that, he started laughing again.

"Stop laughing!"

He laughed even harder. Just then, Angemon came into the room with Blackgatomon on a leash. Kazu took one look at Blackgatomon and the look on her face, and went into hysterics again.

"Did you have to put her on a leash? I'll admit, it's a good idea, but he's never gonna stop laughing."

Rika was proven wrong a second later by Kazu hurting himself. "Oww! Make the pain go away!"

"That's what you get for laughing."

Angemon tied Blackgatomon to the door, and walked over to Rika and Kazu. A white shiny glowing light appeared in his hand, and he brought the light to Kazu.

"Aah! Get that shiny thing _away_ from me!"

"Calm down, and stay still. It will heal you." He pressed the light into Kazu's shoulder, and the pain went away.

"You think you could do that to me?" Rika asked.

"Of course." He produced another white light, and pressed it into Rika's leg, which immediately felt better. Rika sighed in relief as the pain disappeared.

"Thanks. Weren't you gonna punish Blackgatomon or something?"

"Yes, I was going to ask you two about that. I already gave her a bath, but do you think I should punish her further?"

Kazu and Rika stood up and said yes unamimously.

"Alright then," Angemon said, turning to Blackgatomon, "Your punishment is this, your ability to attack will be taken away, and you will be released into the human world. You may get your abilities back someday, but _only_ when you learn your lesson." He went over to her, and put his hand against her chest. When he took it back, it was surrounded by a multi-colored glow.

"Woah, that's cool. Can you give that glowy stuff to me?" Kazu asked.

"Kazu, if you had _attacks_, I don't know how the world could hope to survive, you aren't even safe near _paper_." Rika said.

"True... But it'd still be cool."

Blackgatomon collapsed, and Rika and Kazu looked over. "Is she okay? She'd better not die, she wouldn't have had a chance to suffer." Rika said.

Angemon untied Blackgatmon. "She has just had most of her strength and power taken out of her, it's natural that she would be unable to stay conscious. She should wake up in a while. Anyway, my experiments are complete for now, so I'll send you back into your own world, and you can bring Blackgatomon and drop her off somewhere."

Suddenly, it seemed like the room was flickering in and out of existence, or maybe they were... Then everything turned white, then they were unconscious. When they woke up, they were lying outside Rika's house, and Blackgatomon was nowhere to be found.

"Do think all that could have just been a dream?" Rika asked.

"And why would both of us have the same dream?"

"True. I just think it's kinda weird. Do you know what time it is?"

"No." They realised it was dark out, meaning they had been gone quite a long time.

Rika remembered that it would show the date and time on her digivice.

"It's around nine, and it's _Tuesday_. We've been gone _over a day_."

"Well at least we weren't killed or anything."

"Yeah... I'd been kinda worried for a while actually, especially when you started freaking out, and when that Blackgatomon broke my leg..."

"Yeah, I actually thought for a bit that we'd never escape..."

"Well, at least we actually _did_..."

"Where should we go now?"

"Into my house I guess, since we're right outside it."

"Okay..."

They went into Rika's house, and there was nobody there. Rika walkd over to the phone and called her mother's phone.

"_Hello?! Rika?! Is that you?"_

"Yeah."

She heard her mother screaming something along the lines of: "Everyone! Come over here and listen, Rika's back!" She heard everyone going over, and talking amongst themselves.

Then she heard Jeri saying: "See? I knew they'd come back."

"How long have we been gone?" Even though she already knew it had been around a day, she just wanted to make sure.

"_Over a day. We were all so worried about you and that other person, and that guy, what's-his-name, tried to track both your digivices on a scanner thingy and you weren't anywhere in the world. He had just been about to try and scan the digital world when you called. Is that other kid, Kazu I think his name was, is he with you?"_

"Yeah." She heard Kazu's parents' sighs of relief.

"_So what happened? Are you two okay?"_

"Yeah, we're fine. Nothing much happened..."

"_What do you mean 'nothing much', you were gone for over 24 hours! _Something_ must have happened."_

"Look, what's it to you what happened? Maybe I don't want to tell you!" And with that, she hung up before her mother could say anything more.

Kazu, who had heard all of Rika's side, wondered what had happened. "What did who say?"

"My mom being a stupid... annoying... Urgh. I hate her. She wants to know 'what happened'. And how am I supposed to explain that we got kinapped by a Blackgatomon and an Angemon, the Blackgatomon beat us up, and we had some sort of "experiments" done on us?"

"Uh... Like you just did?"

"No! You don't get it! She'll freak out, and chain me to my bed, and never let me out of the house ever again!"

"I'm sure she won't do anything _that_ bad. One time, I thought my parents were gonna do that to me, and they actually just let it go."

"What did you do?"

Kazu looked away guitily and nervously at the memory. "Well... You see... In like fifth class, I was put in charge of feeding the rabbits after school every day..."

"It involves you and rabbits. This can't end well."

"Yeah, it doesn't... So you see, for the first three days, I kinda forgot to feed them, so then I remembered, and when I got there, they had chewed this big hole in their cage, and two of them were missing. So I went and looked for them, and when I found them, uh, you aren't squeamish or anything, are you?"

"No..."

"Good. When I found them, one had like, _eaten_ the other. Not all of it, or even close. It had just chewed this big hole in the middle of the other one, and it had loads of bugs flying into it and around it and the first one was all covered in blood-"

"Stop it before I'm sick!"

"You don't wanna hear how the other two died?"

Rika gave him a weird look. "I hope nobody puts you anywhere near any animals _ever_ again. And no, I don't want to hear how the other two died. I can't believe your parents _let it go_, after you _killed_ three rabbits."

"I think they kinda thought that if they didn't punish me then it wouldn't have happened..."

"I actually feel sick..."

"Hey, you said you weren't squeamish."

"Doesn't mean I can bear the thought of rabbits... Ugh, I can't even say it..."

"Well the one that ate through the other one got ran over by a car, and it was really weird, it kind of exploded-" He was cut off by Rika hitting him.

"Didn't I say stop?"

"Can't I not finish?"

"No, you can't. Or do you want me to violently murder _you_?"

"Hey, it wasn't _murder_, it was an accident. I can't help it if rabbits turn cannibalistic after three days, and don't look where they're going when you're chasing them, and jump into wood chippers..."

"Wood chippers?!"

"Yeah, you see, another rabbit escaped, and I was trying to round them up, and the first one ran out in front of a car, and the other one jumped into a wood chipper, which I kinda tripped over..."

"Ew. That's horrible and disgusting."

"Well I had to watch it happen, and then live with it for the rest of my life."

"Huh... Sorry."

"That's okay. Are you able to watch horror movies?"

"Yeah. It's easy to watch horror movies, 'cause you know that they never actually happened. Anyway, we were talking about... What were we talking about?"

"You said that if you told your mom what happened, she'd never let you out of the house again."

"So you _do_ listen. I thought boys never listened. Or do you fancy me or something, and that's why you bother to listen?"

Kazu blushed deeply and looked down at the ground. "No. Why would I?"

Rika laughed silently at his blushing, until she realised that the last thing she needed was something to make her life even _more_ complicated. She frowned a little, remembering her date with Henry, and being rejected by Takato. It seemed like such a long time ago it had all happened, but it was only one or two days ago...

"I was just kidding, you know."

"Huh? Y-yeah, I knew that..." He wouldn't look at at her, he looked al around the room, but not at her.

"Typical." Rika thought. "I upset him. It would be fine if I had been _trying_. But I was only kidding... (sigh)"

"Kazu? Look at me."

He looked at her. "Yeah?"

"(sigh) Look, let's go to Hypnos, that's probably where everyone is."

"Okay."

* * *

When they got to Hypnos, everyone was there, just as Rika had predicted. As soon as they walked in, everyone in the room turned to look at them,and Jeri ran over and hugged both of them.

"I missed you both so much! I was so worried! We all were! What happened?"

"Jeri, let go of us." Rika said.

"Sorry." She smiled nervously. "I guess I get a bit carried away sometimes, don't I? Yeah, I do, I should really try and stop, but then again everyone needs a carried away person don't they?" She kept on talking even though Rika and Kazu had stopped listening, and were getting a little freaked out.

"Jeri?"

"Huh? Oh sorry, I was just talking to myself, I've been doing it a lot lately, it's nothing to worry about."

Rika and Kazu looked at each other both thinking, "Yeah, right..."

"So," Kazu said, "Did you manage to survive without us for a day?"

"Well, we were all kind of worried about you both, especially when nobody could reach you, find you, or track you." Henry said.

"Yeah, what happened?" Takato asked.

"Well why should I tell _you_?" Rika asked before Kazu had a chance to say anything.

Takato looked down at the ground, and most of the people watching wondered what was going on between them.

"Anyway," Yamaki said, interrupting the awkward silence, "Both of you _need_ to tell us what happened, so we can attempt to prevent it from happening again. Now, what happened?"

They began their story, Rika quite reluctantly, and Takato, instead of listening, began thinking to himself.

"Does she have a grudge against me? I said sorry... (sigh)" He began to remember what had happened the day before. "I suppose it _was_ only yesterday, it doesn't give her a whole lot of time to get over it. But still, I thought Rika was tough... And she's letting this one little thing get to her. It's not like I don't like her anymore or anything... Why does everything have to be so hard? But, I think I did the right thing..."

He resumed listening to the story, which was pretty much over.

"And where'd Blackgatomon end up?" Jeri asked.

"I don't know, when we woke up she was just gone. She could be anywhere in the world..." Rika replied.

"Huh, I wonder if she'll get a partner or something..." Kenta said.

"Speaking of which," Rika said, "Where are all the digimon?"

"I'm pretty sure they're out in groups, looking for you guys. People are trying to find and contact them to tell them you two are safe." Henry said.

* * *

All of the Tamers had gone home, it was now 10 o'clock at night. Kazu lay awake in bed, thinking.

"My parents never said anything, so maybe the fire department guy was bluffing, I'd say he was actually... But I wonder who did it... Who'd be so evil? Ha, it's kinda weird, you'd think I'd be thinking about Blackgatomon and stuff... Maybe I'm in shock or something... I wish I could just go to sleep..."

And his wish was granted a few minutes later, as he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Yay! Chapter over!

Terriermon: I forgot you existed...

Me: Well that's a nice thing to say.

Lopmon: Yeah, I forgot you existed too... No offence or anything...

Me: You're both so mean... Or at least forgetful.

Lopmon: Why are you writing fanfiction today anyway? Look outside, the sun is shining!

Me: It's the sun's fault that it took me two days to write this. And the thing is, when my writing gets broken up, I forget what I was going to do. Once, I had left this for about an hour and a half. I came back, there was the beginning of a sentence, and I had no idea what it was, what it meant, or where I was going with it.

Terriermon: How could you not know what it was?

Me: Well, it was either a capital i, or a lowercase l... When it's by itself, it's really hard to tell...

Terriermon: Ha ha! (starts laughing)

Me: Okay... Anyways, please review everyone! Oh, and tomorrow's the first day of June, happy first day of June everyone! And if it's anyone's birthday, happy birthday!

Lopmon: Um... That's kinda weird...

Me: I know that, all too well. Anyways, next chapter should be up sometime, probably around Wednesday, so... Bye!


	9. The dream

Hi everybody! Welcome to chapter 9! Yay!

Lopmon: I thought you were gonna update on Wednesday.

Me: So did I, but I'm moving house... And I'm only two days late! Anyway... Uh...

Terriermon: Why don't you thank the reviewers?

Me: Okay. Thanks lots to Duckielover 151, Raakshii, and Pustolio the magnificent for reviewing!

Terriermon: Wow... You _actually_ got _another_ reviewer! I'm amazed...

Lopmon: That's a little harsh, we all know that people do read this.

Me: Yay! Lots of reviews! I'm happy! Should I start the chapter now?

Terriermon: No. Last chapter, why did you say happy birthday to anyone whose birthday it was? It's people's birthday every day, but you only said it then.

Me: I only thought of it then. Anyways, let's start the chapter! Yay!

* * *

It was Wednesday morning, and Ayaka was lying awake in bed. She didn't need to get up, as it was 6am. She began thinking to herself.

"I wonder what happened to Kazu, the guy said he would go to the police, and then Kazu wasn't in school... Then again, neither was Rika, maybe there's a cold or something going around... Oh who am I kidding, besides, the rest of the Tamers just randomly left after a while, so obviously the thing is Tamer related, and not the police going after Kazu, or anything else... Why do I care what happens to him anyway? Although if the police _did_ investigate, and traced it back to me... I'd be in so much trouble... But it's not like that'll happen. Ugh, why am I awake? I don't need to be up for like, an hour an a half..."

She fell asleep within 10 minutes.

* * *

(Dream scene)

She woke up in a field, wearing a dress. The dress was about knee-length, and was light pink. She was sitting under a tree with cherry blossoms on it, and the field was filled with flowers. The sun was shining, and there were no clouds in the sky. One strange thing was, that everything seemed to appear only as soon as she noticed it. She reaised her hair was down from it's usual pigtails, and she was wearing a pink hairband with flowers on it.

"Who on earth dressed me? I'd never wear anything like this... Well, not often or in public or anything... And where am I, how did I get here? I've got to admit though, this _is_ a beautiful field..."

She realised she had been talking to herself out loud, and stopped. Just then, she heard another voice that sounded strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"The field may be beautiful, but not half as much so as you."

"Um... Thanks, I guess. Who are you? Do you know how I got here?"

"I brought you here, we're on a date, remember?" And Kazu walked out from behind the tree. There was nothing unusual about him, or at least, the way he was dressed. He had been speaking with a slightly different voice, and he appeared to be hiding something behind his back.

Ayaka stood up. "We're on a date?" So _that's_ why she was all dressed up, but something was still not right...

"You bet, honey." Kazu said, smiling. His voice sounded normal again. "And look what I've got, just for you."

He brought his hand from behind his back, and he had a box of chocolates and a flower.

Ayaka blushed. Kazu sure went to a lot of trouble for her... Wait, that's what wasn't right! Kazu wouldn't do all this, he wouldn't ask her out, or compliment her, or give her presents, or anything.

"You can't really be Kazu, can you? The Kazu I know wouldn't give me compliments and presents or anything like that. What's going on?"

"It doesn't _really_ matter what's going on, does it? You can always find out later. But for now, let's just enjoy our date, shall we?" He said, moving closer and putting his arms around her.

She relaxed into his embrace, and leaned on him. Whoever he was, he was right. She was with some nice person who liked her, and wasn't afraid to show it. Nothing else mattered...

"Yeah, you're right. But, are you really Kazu?" She asked, looking up into his eyes.

"You bet. Ayaka, I've always loved you, I've just been afraid to show it, in case you rejected me. But, now we're here, just you and me, and I can express my true feelings for you." He pulled her close, and hugged her.

She felt so calm, relaxed, at peace. She wanted nothing more than to stay here in this position forever, to just be held...

"Kazu, I've always loved you, too. I just didn't want to show it because I thought you'd make fun of me, or reject me. All I want right now is to stay here with you forever..."

With that, she turned around and kissed him. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours, but, Kazu suddenly disappeared into thin air. Before Ayaka even had a chance to comprehend this, everything else started disappearing too. The flowers, the tree, the sun, the sky, the field, and everything she was wearing reverted back into her normal clothes, until it was just her, and never-ending nothingness.

(End dream scene)

* * *

When she woke up, it was 7:20. "Good." She thought. "That was quite a weird dream, though. Kazu, on a date with me, me all dressed up, me and him saying we loved each other, and then- Kissing! Ew, I'd _never_ kiss _Kazu_, or dress up like that for him... (sigh) That's what happens when I think about him then fall asleep..."

Her alarm went off, and she turned it off, and got up.

* * *

(Switch POV)

When Blackgatomon woke up, it was bright, and she didn't recognise the place at all. "Where am I?" She thought, until she remembered. "Oh yeah, that's right, Angemon took away my attacks and sent me to the human world. So that's where I am." She looked around. She was in a forest-like place, but could hear humans walking and talking. "I wonder what I should do now? I guess I'll just walk around a bit..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Everyone was at school, but not bothering to sit down. There was a crowd around all of the Tamers, but mostly Kazu and Rika. At least six people were all asking them questions about what had happened, as it seemed like something important. However, Ayaka was not a part of this crowd. She was sitting down next to the crowd, as she thought that if she asked Kazu where he had been, it would seem like she _cared_ where he was, and then who knows what could happen. She stared at the crowd and wondered what could possibly be so interesting, digimon appear all the time, it's not _that_ amazing. "Maybe it was something worse..." She thought. But she figured it didn't matter much, she could always ask the girls later.

"Alright, sit down everyone! I've let you stand there long enough." Ms. Asagi yelled.

Everyone sat down, Kazu sat next to Ayaka, the same way she had done to him before. Ayaka suppressed a laugh at that. Did he _really_ think she wouldn't notice him? Or not notice that he was just doing what she did to him the day before yesterday.

"I know what you're doing." She whispered.

"Oh yeah? What _am _I doing then?"

"Copying what I did to you Monday, yelling and getting us both in trouble and all. Right? Or are you just sitting next to me 'cause you missed me yesterday?"

Kazu tried not to blush at that statement. He didn't know why he _should_ be embarassed, but he was_. _"That'sstupid_._ Why should I care if she thinks I fancy her? But... I got embarrassed when Rika said the same thing... What's wrong with me?!"

Kazu slammed his head down on his desk.

"Um, that was loud. Are you okay?" Ayaka didn't bother whispering, as Kazu had already attracted the attention of the whole class.

Kazu didn't react for a second, but then he lifted his head up and blinked. "Um, yeah. I'm fine..."

Ayaka wondered what had been going through his mind, if anything. "Are you sure about that?"

She smiled slightly, her one little joke was making him freak out so much, maybe he _did_ like her... She smiled more, but quickly forced herself not to, as not only would people wonder what was with her, she didn't want to be _happy_ about Kazu maybe liking her... Now why is she feeling so light-headed, like flying..?

Kazu noticd Ayaka was staring almost blankly at him, and smiling kind of dreamily. "Uh... I think _you're_ the one that isn't okay... You've been staring at me for the last few minutes..."

Ayaka came back to reality. "Huh? What? Oh, right... Um... You know, maybe I should sit somewhere else..." She couldn't help but grin nervously in embarrassment, and she felt herself blushing a little.

Ms. Asagi, who had left them to argue, or randomly space out, as it seemed to be, for the past 10 minutes, decided to try and get them back to reality. After all, she had a lesson to teach, not to mention everyone in the room was staring...

"Kazu? Ayaka? Wake up! You are in school, you do know that, don't you?"

They looked up at her with guilty looks on their faces, Kazu's quickly hidden. "What? I'm in school now? I thought I was on Mars!"

Ayaka looked at him. What an idiot, when he's caught not paying attention, he tries to make a joke about it. Like that would get him out of it, he'll just end up in more trouble.

"Kazu... Very facetious of you. Now stop whatever it was you two were doing, and pay attention. We are going to be learning about the amazing world of prepositions."

Once she was safely about five minutes into her lecture, Kazu passed a note to Ayaka.

"2 questions, why were you spacing out just there, and what does facetious mean? Cool?"

"_How am I meant to know what it means? But I'd say it means stupid. And about the spacing out, I don't know, and why should I tell __you__ anyway? And I you aren't telling me where you and Rika were yesterday."_

"You never asked. But since you kinda just did, why should I tell you?"

"_Because I'm better than you."_

"Instead of wasting paper, let's pretend that the whole 'am too, are not' thing has already happened. What else are we gonna talk about now though?"

"_How am I supposed to know? Do you wanna actually pay attention, or is that a foreign concept to you?"_

"Yeah, yeah, very funny. Not. Besides, why would I wanna learn about... Whatever it was she said."

"_Prepositions. I don't know what they are either."_

At this point, Ms. Asagi noticed them passing notes, and decided to put a stop to it.

"Kazu, Ayaka, stop passing notes, and each of you give me an example of a preposition."

They both looked completely bewildered by this reqest, but both started thinking, and they pointed to each other.

"You two don't know what that means, do you? A preposition is a word describing where something is, _not_ an insult, as you seemed to think. Now, I'm going to be passing out worksheets on everything I've just covered, this _ will_ be on the test, so you two had better catch up."

She then continued trying to teach her boring lesson. Meanwhile, Ayaka started thinking.

"I can't believe I randomly started spacing out when I thought that Kazu might like me... Not like he would anyway... In fact, I think _I'm _the one that likes _him_! Actually, no, that can't be true, it can't be. Ho could someone like me like someone like _him_? Yeah, that was just a stupid thought, where did it even come from?" Her mind wandered to her dream.

"Suppose that's why I thought it was possible... But, there's _no way_ I could ever like him. Never. Because I hate him. Yeah, good." She knew, deep down, that she _did_ like him, but there was no way she would ever admit it, not to herself, not to anyone.

Lunchtime finally came around, so Ayaka went off with Jeri and Miki.

"Hey Ayaka, did you notice Kazu sat next to you? I bet he likes you, isn't that just so cute?" Jeri said enthusiastically.

Ayaka gave her a weird look. "Well, um, for one, yeah, I kinda noticed that he sat next to me. And I sure hope that he _doesn't_ like me, 'cause that would be _horrible_!"

"She_ is_ right you know," Miki said, "Kazu liking her, that would _not_ be good. He'd like, stalk her, and kidnap her, and rape her, and all that sort of thing. In fact, that's probably what happened with him and Rika yesterday. He probably kidnapped her, raped her, and threatened to kill her if she deviated from their Blackgatomon story."

"Exactly! Though, Rika wouldn't give up _that_ easy, and Kazu couldn't kidnap a _sandwich_." Ayaka said.

"Well anyway, _I _think he likes you. Why _else_ would he sit next to you?"

"Because he's a pervert or something?"

"And that means he likes you!"

"Fine, fine, he likes me. Now will you stop going on about it? I'm gonna end up with nightmares or something..." She started to remember her dream, _again_.

Jeri and Miki noticed Ayaka looking kind of deep in thought suddenly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, you look kinda depressed or something."

"It's nothing."

"You sure?" Jeri asked concernedly.

"Yeah, I'm sure." And she walked away.

* * *

Okay, chapter over! You know how long that took me to write? I think it was about five days! And suddenly I've just gone blank, I can't come up with anything else. It's called writer's block, as far as I know. Hopefully I'll have something tomorrow or the day after.

Terriermon: Ha ha, you've got writer's block! But, I thought that only happened to _good_ writers. Why'd it happen to you? Ha ha, I'm so funny.

Lopmon: You're not really. And I think it can happen to anyone who writes.

Me: Exactly. Now, I'd like to say thanks again to my reviewers, thank you all! And if you have any ideas, any at all, please tell me, as I'm out of ideas. Also tell me if this was any good, or complete nonsense, as I think it kind of deteriorated towards the end or middle or something. And for the first time ever, I actually read through it a few times and added and deleted _entire paragaphs_. Usually I hardly go through it, never mind rewrite it. Anyways, please tell me what you think, and _please_ give me ideas, I need some ideas! Anyways, the next chapter will be up sometime, I don't know when, so see you then! Bye!


	10. Realisation

Hi again everyone!! Welcome to chapter 10!! Which is an amazing record for me... The longest thing I ever wrote was 6 chapters I think...

Terriermon: I thought you had writers block...

Me: So did I. I think I managed to cure it before it set in properly.

Lopmon: That's good, the story lives another day.

Me: Yep! And thanks lots to Duckielover 151 who reviewed, and pointed out the fact that I had 3 plot lines. I actually hadn't noticed that...

Terriermon: No-one else reviewed?

Me: Maybe I'm updating too fast for them to keep up... Ha ha.

Lopmon: What are the three plot lines?

Me: Well, Duckielover 151 said they were Takato, Rika, and Ayaka, but I think it's more like, Rika, Ayaka, everything else. Takato doesn't really have his own plot, he just shows up a few times early on.

Lopmon: I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering, how did you cure your lack of inspiration?

Me: Well getting a review sure helped, and then I read over the whole story really slowly, and tried to figure out where I had been going, what I had been trying to do, and then what to do next and how to do it.

Terriermon: Cool.

Me: Yep!

Terriermon: You've been saying yep a lot today...

Me: I only said it twice!

Terriermon: So?

Me: (sigh) Anyways, I suppose I'll start the chapter now.

* * *

Takato, Henry and Kazu were at school, talking about random things. Takato thought of something, and he noticed that Kazu had been avoiding the subject.

"Hey Kazu, why'd you sit next to Ayaka today?"

"Yeah actually, I'd been meaning to ask you that too." Henry said.

Kazu almost, but not quite, started blushing, and looked quite uncomfortable suddenly. "Um... Well, uh... I don't know."

Henry had a feeling he wasn't telling the whole truth, but didn't particularly want to push it. Takato however, was a different story.

"Yeah right. Come on, _why_?"

Kazu looked more uncomfortable. "I don't know, okay? Can you stop asking? I _had_ a reason, but I forget what it is."

"Okay then, sorry..." Takato had been hoping for a better answer, but he supposed that would do, for now.

There was a slightly awkward silence. "So... Um, now what?" Henry asked, hoping to get the conversation going again.

Thoughts and memories suddenly rushed into Takato's mind, all of them about Rika or Jeri. "Um, I-I have to go now... Bye!"

And he ran off, he didn't know why, it just seemed like the right thing to do. When he stopped running, he was all alone. He didn't know if that was good or bad, one part of him wanted, no, _needed_ to be alone, but, another part was almost afraid to be alone.

"Well, whether it's a good thing or not, I'm alone now." He thought to himself. "So now what? And why did I suddenly think of Rika and Jeri? Well Rika because she likes me... And Jeri because I said I liked her..."

The realisation hit him that Rika liked him, sure, he knew that already, but it only sank in now just how big a revelation that actually was. _Rika liked him_. And he had said no to her... She hates him now...

"I wonder if she still likes me that way, but doesn't like me at the same time... That would be kinda funny." He smiled at the thought.

He thought about what he had said to Rika.

* * *

"_W-well, uh... Um, uh, w-well, y-you see... Uh... Do I have to answer now?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Is it okay if I'm blunt about it?"_

"_Yeah, whatever."_

"_Okay. Sorry... It's just... Well... No. I like Jeri... Sorry. I hope you're not too sad..."_

* * *

_  
_

But, he realised, he_ didn't_ like Jeri. He just kinda thought he did. Sure, he liked her back during the D-Reaper, and even way back when they had all just became Tamers, but, he had stopped liking her since then.

"Great, so not only did I say no to Rika, I lied to her too. But wait, I didn't know I was lying, so was it still lying? Oh, I'm confused. (sigh) This is confusing. So if I don't like Jeri, who _do_ I like? Maybe I don't like anyone... Yeah, that makes sense... I've sure been realising a lot of things today..."

He realised he'd been standing there staring into space for about 10 minutes. He came out of it a lot clearer on things, but to anyone watching he must have looked really weird. Luckily, nobody was watching. He walked back to where Henry and Kazu were, only to find them gone.

"Huh, that's weird... Well, not really, I _was_ gone for a while... But I wonder where they went..."

He set off to look for them.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Rika was walking around by herself, as she didn't really want to talk to anyone. She remembered yesterday, and in particular, the way she had behaved towards Takato.

* * *

"_Yeah, what happened?" Takato asked._

"_Well why should I tell you?"_

* * *

_  
_

She regretted it slightly, as he hadn't done much to her really, just rejected her, and he couldn't really help it if he didn't like her that way.

"Why am I going so easy on him? He's not even here. I suppose I kinda need to get over it, then again, I didn't even know that I _wasn't _over it 'til that happened. I still don't know why I care, I'm abrubt to _everyone_, aren't I? Oh wait, I know why. I like him." She laughed silently at her own forgetfulness. "How could I just forget that I like him? You don't just forget things like that! Unless... Maybe I don't like him as much as I thought... Then again, I've kinda been through a lot, being kidnapped and all, so it sorta makes sense that I'd forget a couple of things."

She continued walking for a while, and she met Takato. "Huh, talk about syncronisity..." She thought.

"Hi Rika... Are you mad at me?" Takto asked, almost, but not quite, nervously.

"No. I mean yes. I don't know!"

"Oh, okay. Um... Are we still friends?"

"Stop asking me questions!"

"Sorry..." He had no idea what to say next. He wondered if Rika _was _mad at him, she seemed like it yesterday, but that might have changed... Except it was hard to know.

"Are you gonna say anything?" She asked, noticing his unusal silence.

"I would if I knew what I was supposed to say..."

"You aren't _supposed_ to say anything, you were just being really quiet."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing!"

"Sor- I mean, uh... What else am I meant to do?"

"I don't know. Look, I don't really want to talk to you right now. And to answer your questions, I'm definitely not mad at you, but I'm not _not_ mad at you, and we aren't _not_ friends."

"I'm confused..."

"So am I. Bye." And she walked away.

Takato stood there, wondering where he had been going before he saw Rika. That encounter had left him even more confused than he had ever been, especially Rika saying that wasn't mad at him, but she wasn't not mad at him. That's just confusing, and hardly worth even trying to figure out. Just then, he heard the bell ring, indicating that everyone was meant to be back in the classroom.

"Typical, late again." He didn't bother to run to get back, as it wouldn't make him any less late, and he was feeling slightly depressed.

He walked into the classroom, and everyone was sitting down with the only free seat being next to Jeri. He sat down there, not noticing that it was quite strange for nobody to be next to Jeri, as she was quite popular.

"Takato... I don't really think I should bother to comment on your lateness since it happens all the time." Ms. Asagi said, and then she began her lesson.

"Why is the schoolday so long?" Takato thought. "And so many lessons about stuff that nobody cares about or pays attention to, never mind remembers... How come no-one ever fails their tests then? Huh... Maybe it's only a few people that don't care and don't pay attention... Wait, we don't fail either... And I suppose we all pay attention at _some_ point, or else we wouldn't know how to read or write or count. I guess the not paying attention thing is just recent then... Ugh, why am I thinking so much about some random thing that I just said?"

He looked over at Jeri, who was passing notes to Ayaka, who was on the other side of her. He wondered briefly what they were talking about, but then figured that not only was it none of his business, it was probably only boring girl stuff anyway.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka was in class, passing notes to Jeri, who she was beside. Takato was on the other side of Jeri, and she noticed that he looked slightly depressed.

"Does Takato look kinda depressed to you?" She wrote.

Jeri looked over at Takato and noticed that he was indeed looking depressed. "_Yeah, you're right. I wonder what's what's wrong with him... And why did you and Miki plan for me to sit next to him?" _

"'Cause he likes you!"

"_Yeah right, how do you know for sure?"_

"Rika said he said it when he rejected her."

"_He was probably just saying it so he could be nice about saying no to her."_

"Doubt it. I'd say he likes you, conversation over."

Jeri rolled her eyes at Ayaka's stubborn-ness, but all the same, looked at Takato again and wondered if he really _did_ like her. She decided to start up another conversation with Ayaka.

"Conversation over, yourself. Let's talk about something else then. You like Kazu, don't you?"

Ayaka looked at the note and felt herself blushing. Surely it wasn't _that_ obvious? And if it was, wouldn't Kazu find out? Not like she actually liked him or anything, it just _seemed_ like that... Yeah...

"_No! Where'd you get that idea from?"_

"The way you act."

"_I don't like him!"_

"See? You're denying it, the true sign of love."

"_How is denying it 'the true sign of love'?"_

"All the people in love deny it. Besides, you're changing the subject, another sign of love."

"_I'M NOT IN LOVE!!"_

"Of course you're not. And Rika doesn't like Takato and Takato doesn't like me."

"_Oh, so you admit it now?"_

"Yep! And you're changing the subject again!"

"_Conversation over!!" _

And from then on, Ayaka refused to accept any notes from Jeri. After a while, Jeri gave up on it. Ayaka would realise how deeply in love with Kazu she was _sometime_. In the meantime, she might as well concentrate on the lesson.

* * *

Eventually, school was over, and everybody went to go home. However, Ms. Asagi stopped Ayaka, Jeri, and Kazu.

"Hang on a second, I need to talk to all of you. Recently, you've all been passing notes in class, and it needs to stop. I don't want to have to confiscate your notes and read them to the class, but if this goes on, I will. I'm just giving you fair warning first. Alright, you may go."

They all went their separate ways, but Ayaka stopped walking. "Much as I hate to admit it," She thought, "Jeri's right, I _do_ like Kazu. I wonder if I should ask him out... I'll ask Jeri... I hope she gives me better advice than she gave Rika..." She laughed silently and kept walking.

* * *

Alright, chapter over! I think this chapter was pretty good, and it only took me two days!

Terriermon: Only?

Me: Better than five days. And I think this chapter is better than the last one at least. Maybe better than chapter 8 too. But I suppose my views are kinda biased, so please review people, saying what you think. The next chapter could be up as early as later today, or as late as in a few days. See you then people!


	11. Another kidnapping

Hi again everyone! Welcome to chapter 11!! Yay!

Terriermon: Why are you so happy?

Me: You should know by now. Anyways, thanks lots to all those who reviewed, Duckielover 151, Raakshii, and dbzgtfan2004!

Terriermon: Another reviewer. You just keep getting reviews, what's up with that?

Me: Maybe I'm good at writing! Although I 'm assuming it's 'cause people like my story.

Lopmon: Wouldn't that imply you're good?

Me: Yeah, but it doesn't guarantee it.

Terriermon: Why don't people like _my_ stories?!

Lopmon: Because you don't write any.

Terriermon: Oh yeah...

Me: Anyways, let's start the chapter now!

* * *

Takato arrived home, and went up to his room. He put his schoolbag on the floor and sat at his desk. He wondered if he should srart on his homework, as it was due in 2 days...

"I guess I should... And maybe it would make me stop thinking about Rika and Jeri..."

He got his homework out, and started on it. It had been less than five minutes when he realised that he had absolutely no idea how to do any of it.

"Huh, maybe I _should_ have been paying attention in class..." He continued to stare blankly at the homework sheets in the faint hope that the answers would come to him, and also because he didn't know what else to do. He couldn't ask his parents, as they would then know he hadn't been paying attention, the internet would help, but there were no computers in his house. Wait, there's computers at a library, right? He could go to a library!

So he grabbed his backpack and homework sheets and set off.

"Where are you going Takato?" Asked his mother.

He stopped, and turned to face her. "Uh... Um... Nowhere... Why?"

"What sort of 'nowhere' would that be, then?" She hadn't been concerned until he said nowhere, now she knew he was trying to hide somethng from her.

"Um... Well, it's nothing... Uh..." He trailed off. What was he trying to get across, anyway?

"And what's in that bag?"

"Nothing!"

She was quite concerned at this point, he woudn't say where he was going, or what was in the bag, for all she knew he could be trying to escape the country, with weapons or drugs or something...

"No!" She told herself. "Of course that's not what's happening, maybe he just wants independence, or maybe he thinks I don't trust him." She looked at her son, who was figeting and looking around nervously.

"Alright then, I'll let you go, but this had better not be illegal, and it had better not involve girls!"

Takato gave his mother a stange look. "Okay then..." He wondered what could possibly have been going through her mind, considering she thought he was doing something illegal and involving girls...

So again he set off to the library, and after walking for five minutes, he realised he didn't really know where the library was.

"Great," He thought, "I've got no idea where I'm going. Then again, I usually end up _somewhere_. And I can always ask for directions..."

He continued in the direction he was going, and looked around for some sign that he was going the right way.

After not very long, an old lady came up to him. "Why do I get the idea that this isn't going to end well?" He asked himself.

The old lady stopped and looked him up and down. "You look lost." She said determinedly.

"Um, yeah, I guess-"

"Well let me give you directions, you turn around when you reach the fourth right turn after the traffic lights between the intersections, keep going in the oppoite direction of where you thought you weren't going, turn left three times, turn right five times, keep going for 25 minutes then follow the arrows until you see a building, then you'll see it on your left."

And with that, she briskly walked away, leaving Takato very confused, especially considering that she had never mentioned where those directions were supposed to lead him. As he now had even less idea what to do than before, he just kept walking in the same direction as he had been before.

He noticed he was getting a lot of strange looks, and he wondered why. He tried not to let it get to him too much, and kept walking. Suddenly, there were no more people.

"Isn't this what happened to Rika and Kazu? But I can't be about to be kidnapped and experimented on, I mean it has to have just been a once-off."

All the same, he was starting to feel a little afraid. He took a deep breath, and tried not to panic. He looked around, and he didn't recognise the place at all. He decided to try not to be afraid, and keep walking. He walked for a while, how long exactly he didn't know, as he didn't have a watch or any other means of telling time with him. He realised that the street he was on now looked exactly the same as the one he had been on a while ago. He suddenly felt extremely scared. This was the _exact_ same thing that happened to Rika and Kazu, except there were two of them, and there was only one of him. He didn't know whether that was good, or bad.

He kept walking, but felt like he was being watched. He turned around, and looked everywhere, but couldn't see anyone. He turned back around and continued walking.

"I'm probably just freaking myself out, and there's no-one there, really." He said to himself out loud.

He still felt like he was being watched, or followed. He stopped walking. The movement he had been unaware he could hear stopped. He knew there was _something_ there, somewhere. But what, and where, he had no idea. He turned around again.

"I know you're there." He said, trying not to sound afraid. "Come on, show yourself!"

He realised that there wasn't much to be afraid of, he had faced fear many times in the past, so why did he keep forgetting, and why was he so afraid now?

"Because," He realised, "I had people to protect then. I'm all alone now, no real reason that I absolutely _have_ to keep going, and nothing to help me or back me up."

He suddenly felt really lonely, and at the same time, grateful that at least he did _have_ friends, even if they weren't with him at the moment. Life would just be so pointless without them...

"You seem like quite a brave young human, perfect for my experiments."

Takato tried to find the source of the mysterious voice, but couldn't see anyone.

"Um, who are you? Where are you?"

An Angemon appeared, semingly out of thin air. Upon seeing the Angemon, Takato visibly relaxed. Angemon picked up on this, and asked him about it.

"Why are you so relieved? Is it becasue Angemons are generally depicted as forces of good?"

"Um, yeah, I guess so. Also, I know the two people you kidnapped- I mean, uh... I don't know what I mean. But I know them and they said you were good."

"You mean the two I last experimented on, a boy and a girl, who did not get on very well, with each other, or with Blackgatomon."

"Y-yeah, I mean them."

"And that's one of the reasons I decided that the next human I experimented on should be alone. It is merely a coincidence that you should happen to know the last two. Now, are you going to come with me peacefully, or..."

He left the sentence unfinished, but Takato could guess what he meant, as Kazu had mentioned being knocked out and waking up in a weird room.

"I'll come peacefully. What are you gonna do to me though? And do you think you could try and not take too long, 'cause my parents will freak..."

"I'll try."

* * *

They were suddenly in the room, without anything changing, they were just _there_.

Angemon led Takato into another strange room, with wires and machines.

"Sit there, and try to keep still. It shouldn't be too painful."

Takato got a bit worried when he said _too_ painful, but figured he might as well just try and get it over with.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka was at home, having finished her homework a while ago. She was debating with herself whether or not to call Jeri and ask her what to do. On the one hand, she was hardly ready to even _admit_ that she liked Kazu, never mind do anything about it, never mind bring _Jeri _into it. But, on the other hand, she kind of wanted to do s_omething, _and Jeri would have a better idea of what to do than her.

After a while of debating with herself, she finally decided it woud better to just take a chance and go for it, and call Jeri.

She dialled Jeri's number, and waited for her to answer. She didn't have to wait very long.

"_Hi Ayaka!"_

"Hi Jeri."

"_What's wrong? You sound kind of sad."_

Ayaka hesitated. If she _did_ tell Jeri, just what would she be getting herself into? She _could_ always back out now...

"Actually, it's nothing..."

"_Yeah right. Come on, what's up? You must have called me for something... Hey, it's about Kazu, isn't it?!"_

"No... Well, okay, fine. I admit it. You're good at this kind of stuff, so... You think you could... Uh..." She trailed off from embarrassment. She couldn't believe she was _actually_ doing this!

"_Help you?"_

"Y-yeah..."

"_Aw, that's so cute! Of course I'll help you! And don't worry, this will actually work!"_

"If you're sure..."

"_Of course I am! It'll be great, you'll see!"_ And with that, Jeri hung up, leaving Ayaka to wonder what she was going to do, and if this had been such a good idea after all.

"(sigh) There's _no way_ this will work, why did I have to call Jeri... Then again, if I didn't try I'd never know... But, it might have been better that way..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Jeri decided to call Kazu, and figure the rest out from there. After all, planning it out in advance was what had doomed her attempt to set Rika and Takato up.

After a few minutes, he answered.

"_Hello? Who is this?"_

"It's Jeri!" She said happily.

"_Okay... Why are you calling me?"_

"Uh... Well... I don't think you'd believe me if I told you..."

"_Why? Who's been murdered?"_

"Um, it's nothing like that. Just... Guess."

"_How am I supposed to guess?! But... Uh... Is it good news or bad news?"_

"Depends what you mean by good and bad."

"_Just tell me!"_

"Fine."

There was silence for a few minutes.

"_Are you gonna tell me or what?"_

"Ayaka likes you."

"_Yeah right."_

"Really, she does! She asked me to help her!"

"_Yeah right, why would she like me anyway?"_

"I don't know actually... But she does, she said so."

"_Why should I believe you? Give me her phone number and I'll see myself."_

"Okay!" She told him Ayaka's phone number and he hung up.

"I hope it doesn't go _too_ badly..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka's phone rang, and she could see it was Kazu. "Oh great, I knew I shouldn't have involved Jeri..." She figured she'd be facing Kazu sooner or later anyway, so she might as well answer.

"Hello..."

"_Hi... Jeri said you like me... Is it true?"_

"Um... Do I have to be honest...?"

"_Well, yeah. But by the way you said that, I'm guessing the answer is yes... Right?"_

"Yeah. What else did Jeri say?"

"_Nothing much. She wouldn't really tell me anything."_

"Oh. Okay... So... Now what?"

"_Well how am I meant to know? But I guess this means I'm not allowed hate you anymore, you can't hate people that like you..."_

"... I just don't know what to say anymore, sorry, bye."

She hung up, feeling like she was about to cry. Even worse, she had absolutely no idea why. She cried anyway, deciding that she didn't _really _need a reason. She wished that that hadn't happened though, then Kazu could continue hating her, and she could continue being in denial. Everything would be fine if only she hadn't asked Jeri. Stupid Jeri, she ruined everything.

"I hate Jeri. And myself. And Kazu, and the world, and life-" She stopped her rant, and resumed crying, even though she still had no reason.

* * *

Okay everybody, chapter over! This actually took me days to write, but only because people kept making me get off the computer.

Terriermon: What on earth is up with Ayaka at the end?

Lopmon: She's a preteen/teenage girl, they're crazy, and don't really need a reason to cry.

Me: Hey! But I suppose you're kinda right. The insane crying was actually based off something that happened to me today.

Terriermon: What was that? Someone randomly crying?

Me: No. You see, the boy I like will _not _stop trying to set me up with this boy I hate. So after that had been going on for a while, I just randomly felt like crying, even though it made no sense.

Lopmon: What about the guy you hate?

Me: He hates me too. We actually got into an argument over who hated the other more.

Terriermon: Does the guy you like know you like him?

Me: Yeah, he just won't admit it. Of course, it's almost impossible for him _not_ to know, since like the whole school does. _Anyway_, let's talk about something else... Uh...

Lopmon: When will the next chapter be up?

Me: Well I thought this would be up yesterday at the latest, and here it is today... So...

Lopmon: Oh, okay.

Me: Anyways, please review people! And thanks, all the nice people who did already! Anyways, next chapter will be up sometime! : )

PS. I'm kinda looking for a beta reader, if anyone is interested, please say so. Thank you!


	12. Alley ways

Hi everybody!!! Welcome to... (dramatic pause) chapter 12!!

Terriermon: Wow... _Someone_'s really hyper today... Have you had any sugar?

Me: Yes! Lots of it!!! But that's not why I'm hyper.

Lopmon: Last chapter you asked for a beta reader, did you get one?

Me: Surprisingly enough, yes. Thanks lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots-

Terriermon: Who?! Just say who it is already!

Me: Drumroll first?

Terriermon: No!!

Me: Fine. You're no fun. Anyway, it's duckie lover 151!!! Big round of applause!!

Terriermon: Stop being hyper!!

Me: (screams in Terriermon's ear) NO!!!

Terriermon: Oww... Okay, I don't think I'll be arguing with you again anytime soon...

Lopmon: Ha ha, that was funny...

Me: Anyways, lots of thanks to the amazing people who reviewed, Raakshii and duckie lover 151! : )

Lopmon: Your hyperness is actually starting to kinda scare me...

Me: Oh well! You know the crazy hit-counter thingy?

Lopmon: Yeah...

Me: Well, this story has had _621_ hits this month!! And it's only been June for 13 days!! I think that's just _amazing..._ But, it means that hundreds of people read this, yet, very few review. Please review, mysterious other people who don't review. But anyway, I've been going on and being crazy and all for a while now, so let the chapter begin!!!

* * *

Takato was strapped to a chair in a bright room, filled with all sorts of machines, what they did though, he had no idea. Angemon was reading a clipboard, but suddenly turned his attention to Takato.

"Stay here, I'll be back in a minute." With that, he left the room.

"How could I _not_ stay here?" Takato thought. "I can hardly breathe, does he really think I'd escape?"

After a while, Angemon came back, carrying an assortment of bottles, each containing some luminous, poisonous-looking liquid, if you could even call it that.

"Am I gonna have to drink those?" Takato asked nervously.

"Yes. Don't worry, they shouldn't kill you. You may experience some side effects, such as dizziness, drowsiness, headaches, nausea, that sort of thing."

Takato gulped nervously. He hoped that they at least _tasted_ good.

Angemon picked up a spoon that seemingly came out of nowhere, as it hadn't been in the room before, and he hadn't brought it in with him, he also picked up a bottle containing bright blue liquid. He opened the bottle, and there was a strange smell from it, kind of like wet paint. He poured the blue liquid onto the spoon, and fed it to Takato. It was strange, it didn't taste anything like it smelled. It tasted of a sickly sweet, way too strong, artificial bubblegum flavour, like a kids medicine. Takato felt slightly sick, and hoped the rest didn't taste like that.

"What exactly _was_ that?" He asked, sounding like he might be about to throw up any minute.

"By itself, nothing. But mixed with the rest, it is an extremely useful way of finding out about humans."

"What are you finding out from giving me coloured medicine?"

"That is classified information." He continued to talk, but more to himself than anyone else. "Now, let's see, I'm sure there was a certain order you're supposed to take these, it's either pink next to _prevent_ death, or pink next to _cause_ death..."

Without any indication as to whether he had figured out which it was, he started pouring out some of the luminous pink liquid. It smelt of very strong perfume.

Takato wondered what it would taste like, and hoped that it wasn't going to kill him. He was fed the pink stuff, which tasted somewhat like lemons, but only faintly. Other than that, it didn't really taste of anything. It was extremely thick, and Takato hoped he wouldn't choke on it.

For the next half hour, Angemon fed Takato a spoonful of all the various liquids, all the while talking to himself, trying to figure out which ones were fatal and which weren't, and in what order. When he was done, he unstrapped Takato from the chair, which then disappeared.

"Thank you for your help and co-operation, you may go now."

The room seeemed to flash and flicker, Takato noticed that the table that had appeared out of nowhere, and all the medicine bottles were gone. He also noticed that he hadn't seen his backpack in a while... Everything was all blending into everything else, and spinning, and there were swirling colours everywhere. He suddenly felt really peaceful, and relaxed. And tired... He felt himself falling, but didn't care. Then, everything went dark, and he was asleep.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Rika was out walking, as she had completed her homework, and was bored. She was listening to music, but still aware of all that was going on around her. It wasn't much, really. Just people, walking, talking to each other, on phones, and occasionally, to themselves. Rika couldn't hear the talking that well, but she could see their lips moving. It didn't matter anyway. Thoughts of Takato and Jeri kept creeping into her head, and she responded by turning the music up. By this point, the music had become almost deafening, so she took her headphones off to see how loud it was without them. She could hear it quite clearly without them on, but she decided she'd had enough music, so she turned it off altogether and put her headphones around her neck. She kept walking, with no destination in mind, when she suddenly just felt like going into an alley way. She had no idea why, but decided to entertain the notion. She slipped through the crowd, which wasn't that thick anyway, and went into the back alley ways. There was nobody there at all, quite a sharp contrast to the previous crowd she had been in. She liked the feeling of being all alone, it made her feel safer somehow. She carried on walking. Suddenly, in the distance, she saw a person lying on the ground. She wondered if it was safe to go any closer, but the person appeared not only to be smaller than her, but to be unconscious as well. Well, they weren't moving anyway. They didn't appear to be breathing either... As she got closer, she realised that she recognised the person. It was Takato!

"What's Gogglehead doing lying in an alleyway? It's late. Well, okay, about seven, but still, a bit late for anyone to be lying unconscious in an alley way, and not breathing... Wait, not breathing?!"

She looked down at Takato, and realised that she didn't know for _sure_ that he wasn't breathing... She deicided to try and wake him up, having somehow forgotten all previous awkwardness relating to him.

"GOGGLEHEAD, WAKE _UP_!!!"

Nothing happened for a fraction of a second, but he twitched and jumped up.

"What? Who are you? Where am I? What day is it? What time is it? Who-"

"Stop! I'm Rika, but you should know that. You're in an alley way, and don't ask me how the heck you got here, 'cause I've got no idea. It's Wednesday, and it's around seven. Now it's my turn to ask some questions, what the hell were you doing lying in an alley way, unconscious? Or were you mugged or something?"

"Oh yeah, I remember now, I was trying to get to the library..."

Rika had to try so hard not to start laughing. "Then what?"

"Well, this old lady tried to give me directions, then I got all confused, even more than I already was, and then suddenly all the streets started looking the same, like when you and Kazu got kidnapped,-"

"Are you sure this wasn't just some dream?"

"Well, it could've been, but I never went into an alley way... Anyway, so then there was this voice, and it was Angemon, and then he brought me into this weird room and attached me to a chair and fed me weird medicine."

"That doesn't explain how you got here..."

"Well, then he said I could go, and everything started blurring and spinning and everything, and then I don't remember anything except you waking me up."

"Oh... Okay. You _sure_ that the part about Angemon wasn't just a dream or hallucination or something?"

"No, I'm not sure really..." Just then, he realised something. Rika was talking to him. He'd noticed that, but, he hadn't _really_ noticed it. He remembered earlier today, she had been acting completely different. Why the sudden change in attitude?

"Hey Rika?" He seemed to have caught her by surprise, he wondered if she had been thinking the along the same lines.

"Yeah?"

"It's just, you wouldn't talk to me earlier, so why are you now?"

Rika tried not to look surprised, but guessed she had failed. Why did Takato have to bring that up? Did he not want her to talk to him? Bringing something like that up is _stupid_.

"What," She said coldly, "Do you not _want_ me to talk to you?"

"Huh? No! It's not that, it's just... Uh... Just, you wouldn't talk to me earlier..."

"Yeah, you said that already."

"And... I don't know! Just yell at me or hit me or something and get it over with, I'm bad at trying to say things."

Rika wasn't quite sure what to say or do. Part of her _wanted_ to hit him, but it wouldn't be as good, because he'd _told_ her to do it. So if she hit him or yelled at him, it would seem like she was doing what he said. So she couldn't do anything like that. What should she say, then?

"Well why _should _I hurt you? I'd like to, but there's no point in bothering to-" She stopped. What was she trying to say? She was going to insult him. Did she like him or not, then? If she liked him, she wouldn't want to hurt and insult him, right? So... How _did_ she feel then?

"Um, what were you gonna say?" Takato asked.

"I don't know..." She wondered if she should tell him. She decided that as long as she made him promise not to tell anyone, it couldn't really be _that_ bad to tell him.

"Oh who am I kidding?" She thought. "He's gonna tell a million people. But I don't care."

"Look, Gogglehead, you know the way I asked you out and you said no?"

"Yeah... Why, was it actually part of another plan to get someone _else_ to like you?"

"No! Just... You're gonna think I'm crazy or something, but, I think I just _thought_ I liked you, and I didn't really, or something like that. Either way, I don't like you that way anymore, that's for sure."

"That's good. I think. Let's just say that's a good thing, because I don't know if it is or not."

"Well it's good for _me_ anyway."

"But, why'd you start liking me and then stop?"

"Common sense kicked in? I don't know why, maybe you rejecting me shocked me out of it. But anyway, why had you been going to the library?" She asked, trying to change the subject.

"You see, I was trying to do my homework, then I realised that I didn't know how to do any of it because I hadn't been paying any attention at school. And I couldn't ask my parents for help, because then they'd know I hadn't been paying attention, and they'd get mad at me, so I thought I should go to the library for help."

"You're an idiot. But I'll help you."

"Yay! Where?"

"Your house I guess..."

So they set off to Takato's house.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka was trying to watch TV, but she kept thinking of Kazu. She had no idea what he was going to do, or anything like that. She was just confused, and couldn't get Kazu out of her head.

She sighed as she flicked through the channels in the hope that she'd find something, _anything_, to take her mind off Kazu. She soon gave up, and threw the remote at the TV out of frustration. She got up and left. She didn't know where she was going, maybe to the park.

* * *

When she got to the park, she didn't know what to do. She figured it was at least better than boring TV. She went over to the swings, and saw someone she knew. She figured she'd go over and talk to them, what else was there to do?

* * *

Alright, that's the end!

Terriermon: What is it with you and cliffhangers?

Me: What?! That's like, the second one in the whole story!

Terriermon: So?

Lopmon: What is it with you and your so?

Terriermon: I don't say it that much!

Lopmon: Yeah you do.

Terriermon: No I don't!

Me: Argument over!

Terriermon: Who wins?

Me: Lopmon.

Terriermon: You're biased!

Me: Yes, indeed I am. Lopmon wins. Anyway, please review peoples, maybe try and guess who was on the swing, and I'll see you all in some other chapter. : )


	13. Conversations and dreams

Hi everyone!!! Welcome to chapter 13, which took me forever to get around to writing.

Terriermon: Ooh, unlucky thirteen!

Me: It's lucky for me.

Terriermon: Ooh, look who's standing up for herself!

Me: Be quiet! Now, I'll thank my amazing reviewers. Thanks lots to duckie lover 151, Raakshii, and animemusiklover crunchyroll!! Yay for all of you guys! Anyway, according to the magical hit-counter thingy-

Terriermon: Would you shut up about the hit-counter?!

Me: No! It amazes me every time I look at it, and it also reminds me of how little people review, so I will not shut up about it. _Anyway_, according to the hit-counter, this story has had 890 hits this month. Yeah, I'll shut up now.

Lopmon: Do you actually remember what was happening in the last chapter?

Me: Not a whole lot. It's weird, I can remember for other people's, but not my own.

Terriermon: Ha ha!

Me: Ha ha yourself. Anyway, chapter starting now.

* * *

Takato and Rika were at Takato's house, Rika trying to help Takato with his homework, and failing miserably. She wondered why she bothered to even _try_ to help him in the first place, but she was here now, and there wasn't too much she could do about it. The only problem was, _why_ didn't Takato get it? She had had enough of this.

"GOGGLEHEAD! _How _can you not understand long division?!" She screamed at the top of her voice.

"But, I can't do maths..." Takato protested weakly.

"Well if you want me to help you, you'd better _learn_ how!"

"But, if I knew how, I wouldn't need help..."

"Shut up, I'm right."

"Okay, sorry..."

They tried to keep going for a while, but just couldn't manage, as Rika was going insane, and Takato nearly was too.

"That's it!! I give up!! Use a calculator, you idiot! Why didn't you even think of that before?!"

Takato stared in awe at Rika's amazing idea. But then realised that that would be cheating. "Wouldn't that be cheating?"

"Who cares, it's better than going insane." She said bitterly. She glared at him. Why had she even agreed to help him anyway? She felt sorry for him? That was probably it.

* * *

We return to Ayaka and the mysterious person in the park.

Ayaka walked up to the swings. "Hi."

"Hi." Henry replied.

She sat down on the swing next to him. "What are you doing out here, were you just bored, or what?"

"I was kinda bored, but to be honest, I keep thinking about things... That I don't really want to be thinking about..." He admitted awkwardly.

Ayaka looked at him. "Seriously? Me too! Thinking of a person?" She smiled slightly, and wondered who or what Henry could be thinking of.

"Yeah, it's a person. You too?"

"Yep, I just can't stop thinking of _Kazu. _Isn't that just so weird?"

"Yeah... I've been thinking of Rika, and the worst thing is, I don't even know why."

Ayaka thought for a moment. "Isn't it kinda weird that we're just here confessing our secrets to each other, and we don't even know each other all that well?"

"I think it's better that way, it's not as difficult or awkward as it might be with someone you knew, because you'd be worried about their opinion of you, whereas with people you don't know, you might never see them again."

"True, good point you've got there, but I think- Actually, you're completely right. I can't tell Jeri anything. Do you- _want to_ just confess all our secrets? I know you've got some too, and it'll feel good to talk about it."

"Yeah, okay. Who'll start?"

"You. I don't wanna." Ayaka smiled as she said that.

Henry smiled too. "Okay, well, you know that Jeri tried to set Rika and Takato up?"

"Yeah."

"Then you know that part of that was for Rika to ask me out, so me and Rika went to a movie, I won't bother with any details, but she told me that she didn't like me and was just using me. Not in those exact words, but that's the meaning I got. Anyway, since then, I just can't stop thinking of her, and, I'm so _sad_. It's weird, because as far as I know, I don't like her that way, and I had only said yes becasue I don't like upsetting people. I keep telling myself that there's no reason to be so sad, but I just can't help it, I think I like her now, but that kinda sucks, because she likes Takato. So... Maybe it _does_ kinda make sense that I'm sad, but it still feels so _wrong_."

Ayaka listened to the story. She just _knew_ that something like this would happen as a result of something Jeri was trying to do. That girl just really didn't know when to stop, and what not to go messing with. She sighed, poor Henry, poor Rika, poor Jeri, and poor everyone that was involved in this fiasco. Nothing involving Jeri and romance can ever end well.

"There's nothing wrong with being sad, you _were_ used. That's saddening. And it makes total sense that you'd like Rika, you can't help but start liking people when they ask you out, 'cause some part of you is just like, 'Wow, they like me? If I like them too it'll be a perfect romance!' Or something like that. And there's nothing wrong with liking Rika, even if she _does_ like Takato, he doesn't like her back, so you'd still have a chance. But, I'm guessing that's not _really _what you're looking for, is it? You've been hurt, and you wish that instead of Rika liking Takato and hurting you, she liked you and you wouldn't have been used. So you don't _actually_ like her, you're just recovering from being hurt."

Henry thought about that, and realised that Ayaka was probably right, his crush on Rika was just a reaction to her playing with his emotions. It made lots more sense now.

"You're right, you're good at this. But it's your turn now, is there a story about you and Kazu?" He smiled, remembering when she had threatened him to give her Kazu's phone number.

"Story? I don't know, I just- You know that me and Kazu were like, enemies?"

"Yeah."

"Well, recently, I started wishing we weren't. Then, suddenly, I was just in love. I know it sounds like I'm phrasing it a bit strongly, but it was _love_. I could contain it for a while, but _really_ recently, a while after I asked you for his phone number, I think around the time him and Rika went missing actually, I just couldn't stop thinking about him. And then I knew I had to do _something_. So, I called Jeri, big mistake, and asked her for help. She called Kazu, he called me, and I had to admit..." She trailed off as she burst into tears.

Henry didn't know what to do, he wasn't very often faced with crying girls that were- well, that weren't Suzie or Lopmon. He figured that maybe the principle would be the same.

"Don't cry, it's okay." He reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, please don't cry." He went over to her, kneeled down and hugged her. She was a bit higher than him, as she was sitting on a swing and he was kneeling on the ground, but it didn't matter.

"Are you alright? It couldn't have been _that_ bad, could it?"

Henry stood up again as Ayaka regained her composure. He sat down on the swing again as Ayaka tried to stay calm.

"Sorry, I keep getting all upset over this. Anyway, I had to admit, _to Kazu_, that I liked him. And all he says is: 'I guess I can't hate you now.' And then I just started crying and couldn't stop! (sigh) I wish... I don't even _know_ what I wish. I shoudln't have asked Jeri, I should have learned from Rika's mistake."

"That does sound pretty upsetting. But, I'm sure it'll turn out okay, just, maybe _don't _ask Jeri for advice again, and... Don't worry about it. I'm sure Kazu just didn't know what to say, and he probably meant that he's going to try and be nicer to you now. Besides, you were able to fake hating him pretty well, so for all we know, he could be faking too. Don't worry though, momentai. It'll be alright, and if you just cry when you feel like it, you'll get over it and be albe to look at it with some common sense."

Ayaka took a shaky breath, as she still hadn't entirely gotten over her bout of crying.

"Thanks, but I think most of that is just typical 'look-a-crying-girl-let's-comfort-her' speech. I'm sure you meant it and all, but, I don't know. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd say to _any_ upset girl."

"Sorry, I just get kinda shken up when people cry, especially girls, because I can't deal with it, and I don't really know what to do. I _was_ trying to be sincere, but I guess it would sound kinda fake. Sorry."

"That's okay, and I do feel a whole lot better, so thanks."

"Thank you as well, you made me feel _lots_ better, I just feel kinda bad that I couldn't properly return the favour."

"That's alright, anyway, it's like, nine, so I should probably be getting home. Bye, nice talking to you."

"You too. I guess I should be going home too, bye."

So the two of them went their separate ways.

* * *

It was now sometime in the middle of the night, roughly 4am. Rika had gone home, and she was in bed asleep. She was having a strange dream.

* * *

(Dream scene)

It was a warm and bright summers day, and she was in the park, standing by the swings. Her hair was down, and she was wearing clothes different to those she normally wore. Not too different, her top was similar to her regular one, except all of it was light blue, and there was a pink heart in the middle. Her jeans were different, they were pink, and so were her belts. She was getting a little freaked out by this, and wondered why she ws there, and why she was dressed like this. Then she suddenly felt very calm, warm, and peaceful. She didn't care if she was dressed weirdly, and in the park for no apparent reason. She felt like she was waiting for somebody, yeah, she _was. _She was waiting for- Who was she waiting for? Oh well, whoever it was, she couldn't _wait_ for them to get here.

She suddenly remembered that she was in the wrong place, she was meant to meet them somewhere else. So she started walking, enjoying the brightness and warmth of the day. She smiled. She kept walking, wondering where she was going, _some_ part of her knew, but she felt like she didn't. She came to the gate of the park, she went out onto the pavement, she saw something further up, and wondered what it was. As she got closer, she remembered who she was waiting for, Takato. But, wait, she didn't like him... Oh well. She walked closer, to what she realised was the scene of a car accident. She got even closer, only to realise, that the victim was, in fact, Takato! She screamed, and started crying.

(End dream scene)

* * *

She was woken by a scream, and had tears running down her face. Rika realised that she was sitting bolt upright, really hot, and sweating. Renamon appeared by her side.

"Rika, you screamed, are you alright?"

"Y-yeah, I'm fine, just a _really_ weird dream..."

"Alright. Would you like me to stay?"

"No, I'm fine."

Renamon disappeared.

Rika lay down again, and realised that her heart was beating very fast, and she was almost out of breath.

"Why did I dream that? I don't like him... Maybe that why I dreamt he was _killed_. If I liked him, it would have ended with the two of us on a date or something."

She couldn't make herself relax, she couldn't even stop feeling like she was running from a serial killer. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but it was futile. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

"This is all Jeri's fault..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Henry was asleep, and also dreaming, but his dream was very different from Rika's. Well, not entirely different.

* * *

(Dream scene)

Henry was at his house, reading. When suddenly, two people burst through the door, Ayaka and Rika. They both dived at him, screaming something that he couldn't quite understand. Ayaka grabbed the book and hurled it across the room, and pinned Henry down on the sofa. Rika threw herself at Ayaka, knocking her and Henry onto the ground, Rika pinned Henry down onto the ground and startd kissing him. By now, nothing was really going to surprise him, so he didn't react.

Ayaka screamed at the top of voice: "Get away from my boyfriend, you-you- you boy stealer!" She grabbed Rika, and pulled her away.

Ayaka jumped on top of Henry herself, and started kissing him. Rika yelled: "What do you mean, _your_ boyfriend? He's mine!!"

Rika kicked Ayaka off of Henry, who was lying on the floor, waiting patiently for whichever girl was going to jump on him next. Rika and Ayaka got into a big fight, and started hitting and scratching each other.

Henry stood up. "Are you guys fighting over me?" He asked, pointing to himself.

Both girls instantly became lovestruck, and seemingly forgot about their fight. They both sighed dreamily, and said in unision: "Wow, Henry's so hot..."

Then they looked at each other, and their fight resumed. It went on for quite a while, until they suddenly pulled a gun each out of thin air, or so it seemed. They pointed the guns at each other.

"Last chance Ayaka," Rika said, "You can just admit that Henry is _mine_, and nobody get hurt. How's that?"

Ayaka glared back in response. "How about _you_ admit that he's _mine_?"

"Never!"

And with that, they shot each other, and Henry was letf alone but for the bodies of the two girls that loved him a bit too much.

(End dream scene)

* * *

Henry woke up, and wondered briefly why it was so dark, and where the bodies were gone. Then it occurred to him that it was all just a dream.

"Weird dream," He thought, "I wonder what brought _that_ on? I'm sure glad I'm not the type to scream in my sleep, I'd to have had to explain that to the whole house." He laughed quietly to himself at the thought of having to explain such a dream to Suzie or Terriermon.

He fell back asleep quickly.

* * *

Chapter over!

Lopmon: Weird dream scenes...

Me: Yeah, I know. Dream scenes are great, you can go as mad as you want, and none of it has to make any sense. You just have to kinda imply stuff.

Terriermon: Long chapter.

Me: Yep! Yay!

Terriermon: What is it with you and your 3-lettered Y-words?

Me: Ha ha ha! You're so funny! (Starts laughing hysterically)

Lopmon: Okay...

Terriermon: And that's not crazy at all, is it?

Me: Sorry, I just start laughing over really little things. Especially when I'm hyper or anything like that. Anyway, please reivew everyone, thanks lots to those that do reivew, and the next chapter will be up at some point.


	14. Love is in the air!

Hi again everyone! It's time for chapter 14!! Yay!!

Terriermon: ...I've run out of interesting things to say...

Lopmon: Finally! We might have some quiet out of you!

Me: Brilliant! I might not be needing duct tape today after all!

Terriermon: Okay... Well I found something.

Me: We're listening, kinda.

Terriermon: Every time you hear the song Far Away you fantasize about that guy you like singing it to you!

Me: (blushes) I do not! Where'd you come up with that?

Terriermon: Ha ha, you're embarrassed. And you mean how do I _know_ that? It's obvious!

Me: No it isn't!

Terriermon: Is too.

Me: (duct tapes his mouth) Ha! Who's right _now_?

Lopmon: Well at least none of us will ever be bored, with this chaos constantly.

Me: Yep! Now, I shall thank my brilliant reviewers. Thanks so much to duckie lover 151 (also for beta-reading), Raakshii, and Beowulf1111!! Yay for them!

Terriermon: (tries to talk but is impossible to understand due to the tape)

Me: Ha ha! You're so cute, you know that? (picks up Terriermon and hugs him)

Lopmon: Ha ha ha! Terriermon looks like he's trying to scream.

Me: Good! Chapter starting now.

* * *

It was Thursday morning, and Ayaka was lying in bed, looking at the ceiling. There was school today. Kazu was going to be there. She'd have to face him. She buried her face in her pillow, not wanting to go down that line of thought. She heard her alarm go off, and turned it off. She looked up again, and looked around her room. She spotted a calendar on the wall. She'd forgotten it existed... She sighed, got up and walked over to the calendar. Maybe it would help her somehow. Today was Thursday 18th June, and there was a test on Friday... That's tomorrow! Hang on... Who wrote that on her calendar, if she didn't know it? Oh, who cares.

"Great, Kazu knows I like him, I forgot I had a calendar, _and_ there's a test tomorrow. This day just gets better and better." She thought, bitterly and sarcastically.

She got dressed and all, and reluctantly set off for school.

"Maybe I could skip school... No, someone might notice, and I'd be practically expelled. (sigh) Guess I'll have to face Kazu..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Kazu was with Takato and Henry.

"Where's Kenta? He's usually here." Kazu asked.

Takato looked around. "I don't know..."

"You're right, he isn't here... Oh well, there's nothing we can do about it." Henry said.

"Yeah..." Kazu looked distracted.

"What's wrong?" Takato asked.

"Uh, nothing."

"Is it because Ayaka likes you?"

Kazu looked at Henry in surprise. "How'd you know that?"

"She told me."

"Yeah, it's 'cause she likes me. She probably expects me to- I don't know what she expects, but something different. I don't know what to do, 'cause if I pretend everything's the same, she'll like, kill me or something. And if I act all different, she'll get all offended. Hey, one of you guys must know _something_, so what do I do?"

"Well, I don't know anything except, girls can be _very_ dangerous..." Takato said.

"Well... I guess just ask her about it. I'd say she's twice as nervous as you are, and if she _does_ get mad at you, it's probably just to hide her fear and discomfort."

"So..."

"So you've got nothing to be afraid of, just talk to her."

"Okay, but if she kills me, it's your fault."

"That's alright."

* * *

When they got to school, things were pretty awkward. Ayaka refused to leave Jeri and Miki, and Kazu wouldn't leave Takato and Henry. However, the two kept sneaking glances at each other, and looking away the second the other saw them. The rest were watching this, and trying not to laugh.

Rika looked at Takato and thought of her dream. Surely it meant nothing, but still...

Takato noticed Rika staring at him, and wondered why she was. She said she didn't like him... Maybe she was lying?

Henry watched Kazu and Ayaka, as they pretended not to be looking at each other. "Why did I dream about Rika and Ayaka? Do I- No, let's not think about that... I wonder where Ms. Asagi is, we've been alone in the classroom for about 20 minutes, almost."

Jeri watched Rika and Takato looking at each other, and Kazu and Ayaka doing the same, except trying to hide it.

"I love being a matchmaker. They may not think it's the best thing now, but they'll thank me later, I'm sure they will." She smiled. "I wonder where Ms. Asagi is, it's not like her to be late."

There was complete silence in the classroom while everybody looked at each other, watched the people looking at each other, and thought to themselves.

After around 10 more minutes of this, Jeri spoke up. "Hey, did any of you notice that Ms Asagi isn't here?"

A few people cheered, and Kazu looked as if he was about to make a comment, but he looked at Ayaka and decided not to.

"I wonder where she went?" Takato said.

"It's not a case of where she _went_, because she isn't even here yet. It's more, _why_ isn't she here?" Miki pointed out.

"Yeah," Rika said, "Maybe she got kidnapped."

This caused everyone in the room to wonder, and it _did_ seem likely. They all started talking, speculating on what could have happened. Quite a few bizzare rumors were created, and it was only worsened by the fact that 15 minutes later, Ms. Asagi was _still not there._

Kazu spoke up. "You know, since there's no teachers here, couldn't we all just leave?"

Ayaka looked like she was about to reply, but instead blushed and looked down to ground.

"You know," Rika said, "That's actually a pretty good idea."

"Much as I'm against skipping school, Kazu's definitely right, there's no point just staying here if there's no-one here." Henry said.

Everyone else in the room agreed, and a lot of them left. The only ones reaining were Henry, Takato, Rika, Jeri, Ayaka, Miki, and Kazu. Strangely, Kenta had never shown up.

"Why are we all staying?" Takato asked.

"Good question Gogglehead. But I don't know, and I kinda doubt that anyone else does." Rika said.

"I think we're staying 'cause we're the cool people!" Miki yelled.

Everyone else except Jeri gave her a strange look. "Have you had sugar?" Ayaka asked cautiously.

"Ha ha ha, sugar. Where's Kenta? Was he even ever here? He doesn't usually miss school..."

"Yeah, you sure miss Kenta, don't you Miki?" Ayaka said teasingly. It had the desired effect, as Miki looked down and blushed.

She looked back up, as she had a comeback. "Oh yeah? Well look who's talking, everyone knows you love _Kazu._"

Ayaka blushed, and wondered what to say. She decided to take the less conventional approach. "Oh yeah, well so what if I do, at least I'm able to _admit it_, unlike you and your precious love Kenta!"

Everyone else in the room was staring now, wondering what Miki's reply to that would be, and if she really _did_ like Kenta.

"Oh yeah, well... Uh... Um... Aw forget it, you win. But just 'cause I don't want to have to start insulting you."

"Alright, sorry I brought up your undying love for Kenta in front of all these people."

"That's fine, at least he wasn't _here_. Sorry I made you confess _your_ love for Kazu."

Ayaka grinned and blushed slightly. "Yeah, that's fine..."

Jeri hugged the both of them, as they were standing close enough to each other for her to do so at the same time.

"Aw, you guys are so cute! I wish _I_ loved somebody..." With that, she let go of both of them, and stared into space dreamily.

"Is it me, or is she a little bit crazy?" Takato whispered to whoever was listening, mainly anyone but Jeri, Miki, or Ayaka.

"A little? And you're just realising that now? Dude, she _invented_ crazy." Kazu whispered back.

Takato laughed quietly. "She's not _that _bad."

"You know what they say, love is blind..."

Takato blinked, but after a few seconds, realised what that was implying, and blushed slightly. "Hey, it's not love, I'm just bad at noticing things is all..."

"_Sure_ you are."

Meanwhile, Jeri snapped back into reality. "Huh? Was I dreaming again?"

"Yep." Ayaka and Miki said at the same time.

"Oh. Oh well, dreaming isn't all that bad, how long was it, and what did I miss?"

Ayaka laughed. "Not very long, and nothing. You should really stop doing that though, it's kinda creepy."

"Is it worse than when I talk to myself?"

"No way, that's _way_ worse."

The two were receiving strange looks from Henry and Rika, but Kazu and Takato were busy talking.

"Jeri, is there something like, wrong with you?" Rika asked.

"No, I'm just a little crazy sometimes, that's all." Jeri said, smiling happily.

"Right..."

Kazu and Takato's conversation had turned into an argument. "Look Kazu, if anyone would do that, it would be you!"

"No way, you're just waiting for the right moment to strike!"

"You're crazy, I could never hurt anyone like that, but I could just see _you_ doing that!"

"Chumly, just admit it, I know what you do at night!"

"You mean what _you_ do at night!"

All five spectators wondered not just what they were referring to, but what could possibly have gotten Takato so angry, as it was quite unlike him.

"Yeah, _great_ comeback, _so_ original! But you've already hit Jeri, we all know what happened between you and her after the D-Reaper, and you're just _waiting_ to do it to Rika!"

Everyone was confused now, especially Jeri and Rika.

"Back up, what did he do to Jeri, and what's he gonna do to me?"

"It's not true! He's lying! He just made it up, and-" Takato was almost near to tears at this point.

"It is _so_ true, and I can prove it-"

"Shut up! Both of you! Now _tell me _what's going on!" Rika yelled, stepping closer to the two.

Neither said anything.

"Tell me what's going on. It involves me, so TELL ME!!"

Instead of actually replying, Kazu said to Takato, "See what you did now? See?"

And Takato burst into tears.

"Yeah, that's right. Fake your way out of it lover boy."

Rika glared at Kazu. "Shut up! Just shut up! He didn't do anything! I might not know what the heck you're talking about, but he wouldn't do _anything_ to Jeri. Now tell me what's going on before I hurt someone! And someone means you!"

Kazu, strangely enough, wasn't intimidated. "Yeah right, and what do _you_ know about what Takato does to who in his spare time?"

"Well what would you know?" Rika was getting really mad now, one more stupid, idiotic statement, and she actually _would_ hurt him.

"A whole lot more than you! I mean, you're just a girl."

That was it. She felt her whole body tense up, needing to hurt him. It seemed like nothing else existed, that was how bad it was. She lashed out, and knocked him to the ground.

* * *

The last thing Kazu saw properly was Rika, glaring at him with all her might, and the last thing he felt was being punched in the face repeatedly, and being kicked in various places. Then he felt like he was sinking, and it all went black...

When he woke up, Jeri was talking to Takato on the other side of the room, Ayaka was talking to Rika, and Miki and Henry were looking at him.

"Hey, he's awake!" Miki exclaimed, but quite quietly.

Kazu tried to sit up, but was extremely dizzy and fell back down again.

"Yeah, you should probably stay lying down, or at least move slowly. Rika hit you a lot, I think you're gonna be painful for the next week or two, she was still beating you up a while after you passed out, it took four of us to get her off you." Henry said.

"Oh. Which four?"

"Me, Miki, Jeri and Ayaka."

"Why not Takato?"

"I think he was too afraid... And also, when he came near, Jeri told him to go hide somewhere safe..." He laughed at the memory.

"Huh, that's weird..."

"You made her _really_ mad, she was lashing out at us too, when we tried to get her off you. It took Jeri screaming in her ear to make her stop."

"Hey, what were you and Takato arguing about, anyway?" Miki asked.

"You know, I don't really remember. But it started when I accused him of being a womanizer or something like that..."

Henry hit his face with his hand. "Typical. He'd never do _anything_ like that, you _do_ know that?"

"I was just teasing him, but he started getting all defensive and all."

"You should have stopped. And teasing Rika was just plain stupid, no, _worse_ than stupid. I don't think there's even a word for how stupid that was, especially that sexist remark."

"Remind me, what did I say?"

"You said you knew more than her, and she was just a girl."

"What was I thinking? Rika's not a girl."

"Kazu... If she heard you, you're dead. Quite possibly literally."

"Am I allowed get up now?"

"I guess so."

Kazu stood up shakily, but regained his balance and walked over to Rika and Ayaka.

"Hi girls, I'm alive! I know you tried so hard for me not to be, but I'm-"

"Shut up." Rika interrupted.

"I'm glad you're okay..." Ayaka said quietly.

"What? But you were just- Never mind." Rika said.

"Glad _someone_ is." Kazu said. "Wait, it's just 'cause you like me, though, isn't it?"

"Well, um... Doesn't make me any _less_ glad. Does it make it mean less?"

"No... Just- Never mind..."

There was an awkward silence.

"Um... I'm just gonna, like, go now..." Kazu said as he walked away.

Ayaka looked sadly at the ground. "He's never gonna like me, is he?" She whispered, sounding quite upset.

Rika looked sympathetic, but didn't know what to say. That was why she had let Jeri deal with Takato, while she, on request, gave Ayaka tips on beating up boys. Namely, Kazu. Which is why Rika was confused when Ayaka said she was glad Kazu was okay, she had wanted to know how to beat him up... Rika pushed that thought away for now, and tried to figure out what you were meant to do with sad people. At least she wasn't _actually_ crying. Yet.

"Don't worry Ayaka, boys are stupid, ask any girl. He probably just doesn't know what to do."

Ayaka looked up again. "Yeah, I guess so." She forced a smile. "But, it's not that hard. I wish he just _liked_ me." She said this looking up, as if the ceiling would grant her wish somehow.

She sighed. "He's never gonna like me though..."

Rika was left at a blank for what to say or do. She just had no idea how to deal with sad people, Jeri was alright, occasionally. But she's _Jeri. _She's _easy _to comfort. Everyone else is difficult.

"Uh, why don't you go over to Jeri and she can cheer you up, 'cause I'm just no good at it." Rika smiled. "Sorry."

"That's fine, I'll tell her to give Takato to you."

Ayaka went over to Jeri and Takato, and sat down on the floor next to Jeri.

"Hi Ayaka!"

"Hi Jeri."

"Aw, are you okay?"

"Mm. Kinda. Hey Takato, can you go over to Rika?"

"Yeah, sure..." He said confusedly. He left them and went over to Rika.

"So, what's up?" Jeri asked.

"(sigh) Kazu's never going to like me, ever."

"Don't be like that! Look at you, you're amazing, you could get _any_ boy, you're beautiful, and smart, and funny, and Kazu's just too stupid to realise that. You can do way better than him! But, if he's the one you've got your heart set on, then what you should do is, go up to him, and ask him why he doesn't like you, and then kiss him! It'll be perfect!"

"Um, he'll think I'm crazy and desperate..."

"No he won't! Come on, I'll go with you!"

"Are you sure..."

Ayaka never got an answer as Jeri dragged her over to where Kazu, Henry and Miki were.

"Bye Henry, bye Miki." Jeri said, waving them off.

Miki got the hint in a fraction of a second, and dragged Henry off with her. "Come on Henry, they need to be _alone_." She said smiling.

Jeri pushed Ayaka forward. "Go on Ayaka, make your move!"

Ayaka blushed bright red. "I don't want to..."

"I'll do it for you then! Hey Kazu, why don't you like Ayaka?"

"I don't not like her!"

"What I mean is, why don't you return her romantic feelings?"

"Um... Shouldn't this be between Ayaka and me?"

"Yeah, I guess so..." Jeri said reluctantly as she walked away.

"So... Ayaka..."

"I didn't put her up to this, she wanted to do it."

"That's alright."

"She also wanted me to kiss you, she probably would've forced me..."

"Do you _want to_ kiss me?"

Ayaka blushed very deeply as her heart went a million miles an hour, and she became breathless suddenly. She swallowed. "Is that a question, or an offer?" She asked, unintentionally whispering.

Kazu noticed his heart beating very fast, and he found it difficult to breathe or talk, suddenly. "I don't like her that way..." He thought. "But, why do I want to kiss her? Is it just an impulse? Should I go with it? Ah, what the hell, a girl only likes you once."

"Yeah, it's an offer..."

Ayaka nodded silently and smiled in ecstasy. The two walked a little closer, until their distance, or lack of it, became almost too much to bear. Both of them were blushing, couldn't breathe, and had hearts going faster than a jet plane.

Kazu froze, he didn't know what he was meant to be doing. Maybe this wasn't such-

His thought was interrupted by Ayaka leaning in and kissing him. He kissed her back, and they both felt fine all of a sudden. Their temperatures had returned to normal, they could breathe again, to some extent, and their heartbeats were now regular. The only strange thing was, it seemed like they had been kissing for nearly an hour, maybe two...

They were brought back to reality by two simultaneous screams.

"I knew it!! I knew it!! I _knew_ they were meant to be!! I _am _a good matchmaker!" That one was Jeri.

"Jeri! You were right, you were right! I'm _so_ glad that Ms. Asagi didn't come in today, or we'd never have seen the making of _true love!!_" And that one was Miki.

Kazu and Ayaka broke apart, stunned by what had just transpired between them.

Ayaka had enough composure to say one thing. "Jeri, you give _great_ advice..."

* * *

Chapter over!! Yay! Wasn't that just the most romantic thing ever?!

Lopmon: Yes, it was great!

Terriermon: Ew. I finally get the tape off my mouth, and I have to experience _that_.

Me: Shut up. Now let's make this short, because I was meant to be in bed a while ago, and I really don't want to get caught. So please review people, and thanks to all those that have read and reviewed, and especially to duckie lover 151, for beta-reading! Next chapter should be up sometime. Bye now! xD


	15. A strange twist

Hiya everybody! Guess what? It's summer!!!

Terriermon: It's been _ages_ since you last updated.

Me: True, true. I've been busy.

Terriermon: Doing what? Procrastinating?

Me: Yeah, a little... Apart from that, I'm sure I've done _something_ else...

Lopmon: Procrastinating?

Me: Putting off doing something.

Lopmon: Oh. That's _way_ different from what I thought...

Terriermon: What did you think it was? Got a sick mind?

Lopmon: No... (whispers to him what she thought it was)

Terriermon: Well what does _that_ mean?

Lopmon: Find it in a dictionary!

Terriermon: Where's there a dictionary?

Me: Here you go. (hands him a dictionary that appeared out of nowhere)

Terriermon: (looks up word) Chewing very thoroughly... You thought she was doing _that_ for what, five or six days?

Lopmon: Come to think of it, that _is_ kind of strange...

Terriermon: (starts laughing hysterically)

Lopmon: (starts laughing too)

Me: Okay... Well, now that we have _proof_ that I'm the only sane one here, let's get on with the chapter! Which is chapter 15, by the way.

* * *

Everyone was at school, Ms. Asagi had still failed to show up, and everyone had instinctively gathered around Kazu and Ayaka in a circle, to see what would happen next.

"So..." Kazu made an attempt to relieve the awkwardness and tension that had now set in, but to no avail.

Ayaka blushed. "Um... Now what?"

"I-I don't know... We _aren't_ together, that's for sure."

She tried to hide her disappointment. "Oh. Why not?"

"Well, I just- I just don't like you that way, sorry."

"But, why'd you kiss me then?" Ayaka felt betrayed and annoyed. If he kissed her, or, as the case may be, let her kiss him, he should like her, right?

"Well, I don't know. To see what it was like."

"Well you shouldn't have!" She yelled, and ran away.

Everyone watched her leave, and Miki and Jeri went after her.

Rika approached Kazu. "How could you _do_ that to a girl who _likes_ you?! It'll probably never happen again, but you don't just mess with someone's feelings like that!"

"But why? It makes sense to me."

"Well of course it makes sense to you, you're stupid!" She then punched him in the shoulder, and kicked him in the shin.

"Oww! You're mean!"

"_Well it makes sense to me!_" She said, mockingly, and bitterly. With that, she walked away, leaving Kazu, in pain, to wonder why what he did was so wrong.

* * *

Rika went over to Takato and Henry.

"Can you guys _believe_ what he did? He kissed Ayaka, and then told her he didn't like her!"

"Well, yeah. We did see it happen." Henry said.

"But- Urgh, why am I getting so worked up over this, anyway? It's not _that_ important. Besides, Jeri will deal with it, whether anyone else does or not."

"Exactly."

"Hey Gogglehead, come with me."

"Um, why? You aren't gonna hurt me or anything like that, are you?" He asked nervously.

"No. Just _come_ with me."

"Alright..."

They walked over to the other side of the room, where they could be alone.

"Um, why did you want to talk to me alone?"

"What were you and Kazu arguing about?"

Takato looked down and blushed. "Nothing..."

"Yeah, right. What were you arguing about?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, tell me!"

Takato backed away. "Please don't hurt me, I just don't want to talk about it, _please_ don't hurt me!"

Rika looked hurt, but hid it quickly. "I won't hurt you, if you tell me." She suddenly remembered her dream. Did it mean something? What if Takato _was_ going to die, or something? No, that's stupid. Why would he die?

"I'm sorry, but I _don't_ want to talk about it. Hurt me if you want to, I guess, but I really don't want to talk about it..."

"Fine then! _Don't_ talk about it!" She pushed him roughly to the ground, and walked away.

Takato stayed on the ground, not bothering to get up. He felt himself starting to cry. He didn't want to cry, but didn't bother resisting.

* * *

Jeri, Miki, and Ayaka came back into the room, after Jeri and Miki gave Ayaka a pep talk, and tried to turn her against Kazu. They didn't really manage.

Jeri looked over at Takato, who was sitting on the ground, looking quite upset. She went over to him, and sat down next to him.

"Hey. Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure? People that are okay don't usually sit on the ground looking sad."

"Yeah, I know. Rika was trying to make me tell her what me and Kazu were arguing about, and I didn't want to talk about it, so she got all mad at me, and pushed me down onto the ground, and I haven't been bothered to get up yet."

"Aw, poor Takato." She put her arm around him. "Do you wanna get up yet, or are you just gonna stay sitting here?"

Takato was getting a little embarrassed by how close to him Jeri was. "Um, I don't know..."

"Get up then!" Jeri said, pulling him up off the ground, and hugging him.

Takato blushed, and wondered what to make of it. "W-why are you hugging me?" He asked with a hint of fear.

"I don't know, 'cause I want to, I guess. You're just so huggable!" She replied happily, pulling him closer, and showing no signs of being about to let go anytime soon.

"So... Um... What did you say to Ayaka?" Takato asked, trying to make the moment less awkward.

"Me and Miki just told her that she was too good for Kazu, and not to bother with someone that _mean_. And that she's a smart, beautiful girl, that could get _any_ boy she _ever_ wanted, and that there's lots of boys out there, and not to worry. You know, all that stuff."

"Oh, right." Takato said, not really interested.

"You don't care, do you? Why'd you ask me?"

"To try and distract myself from the fact that you're still very, very close to me, and it scares me."

She let go of him. "Oh. You know, you could have just said so. But you _are_ huggable!"

"Right, okay..." He backed away, and slowly went somewhere else, leaving Jeri to wonder what was so strange about being told that you were huggable.

"(sigh) Oh well. It is undeniable, but I guess he doesn't care. Oh well, I can go tell Miki and Ayaka about how huggable Takato is!" And with that, she went off to do just that.

* * *

Takato walked around, wondering who to talk to. Kazu? No way. Not Henry and Rika, and not Ayaka, Miki and Jeri. "Great, there's no-one to talk to. Oh well, I guess I can just go into the corner by myself."

And so Takato went over to the corner of the room, and sat down. He thought to himself, about all the things that had happened.

"Let's see, Ayaka and Kazu kissed, then Kazu said he didn't like Ayaka, and then the girls talked to her, and Rika yelled at me... I guess that's it... No wait, it isn't. Why did Jeri hug me like that, and then say I was huggable? I don't get it... Girls are weird... Yeah, that explains a lot... Kazu's weird too..."

And then he fell asleep.

* * *

(Dream scene)

Takato was in a place, not really a _place_ though, as such, but just a whirl of color. Lots of colors flying around, all the colors in the rainbow, actually. He was walking, but he had no idea where he was, or where he was going.

"Where am I? And better yet, how did I get here?"

After a few minues, he met Kazu, Ayaka, Rika, and Jeri.

"Hi guys, do you know where we are?"

Rika was the first to respond. "You don't know anything! You expect everyone else to know everything _for you_, just _learn_ something for once in your stupid life!!" She screamed.

"Okay... Jeri, do you know?"

"Aw, that's so cute! You don't know where we are! Isn't that just the _cutest_?"

"Uh... Kazu, how about you?"

"Dude, I _know_ what that's code for, and I won't let it happen! Stay _away_ from Jeri and Rika, before _someone_ ends up in jail!"

"Ayaka?" He wasn't expecting anything sane at this point, but he hoped that Ayaka would at least make a _little_ sense.

Instead of replying, Ayaka burst into tears. "(sob) Do you _know_ what Kazu _did_ to me?! How can you _say_ something like that?! (sob)" And she resumed her crying.

"Alright... I'll just assume that you guys _don't_ know where we are..."

"It's not our job to know where _you _are! How can you be such an idiot! You know what? I hate you!! You never tell _anyone anything_!! Never! And you expect _me_ to tell _you _where you are?!" Rika yelled.

"Um, I'm sorry..."

"Do you think sorry is good enough?!"

"Dude, 'sorry' doesn't fix what you did to Jeri, look at her, just look at her!"

"You're so sweet, and cute, and huggable!" Jeri cried, hugging him.

"(sob) Why do _you_ get somebody, and not _me?_" Ayaka then resumed her crying, even more hysterically this time.

"Uh..." He wondered what to do now, he was surrounded by crazy people... Hang on, that was it! Crazy people are afraid of maths!

"Stop hugging me! Two plus two is four!"

Jeri recoiled in fear. It was working! Maybe it would make them all stop being so crazy!

"Seven minus one is six!"

The crazy people all stepped back a bit.

"Yes!" He thought. "Just a bit more, and they'll leave me alone!"

* * *

(Back in reality)

All eyes were on Takato now, who was asleep in the corner of the room, and shouting out random equations.

"Five and five is ten! Take that, Jeri!!"

"What the _hell_ is that idiot dreaming about?" Rika asked.

"I've got _no_ idea..." Henry said bemusedly.

"Well, whatever it is, it involves me!" Jeri exclaimed happily.

"Well of _course_ he's dreaming about _you_, he loves you!" Kazu said.

"Is that what you and him were arguing about?" Rika asked.

Kazu blushed slightly. "Um, yeah... Pretty much... You should just go with that..."

"Can't say that was the answer I was looking for, but I got more out of you than I did Gogglehead."

"Good."

"Stay back! Thirty divided by ten is three!!"

"Getting into division now, huh." Ayaka said.

"Yep. Wonder if he'll get into Algebra if we leave him there long enough." Miki said.

Jeri laughed. "Yeah, that would be funny. What I'm wondering is, just _what_ is he dreaming about?"

"Exactly!" Said Rika.

"You know, we _could_ just wake him up and find out..." Henry said.

"Hmm, okay... I don't think he would have gone much further than division, anyway." Miki said.

"I'll wake him up." Rika said. "WAKE UP!!" She screamed.

Takato woke up. "Aah! The maths isn't working! Wait- oh. It was a dream... That explains it..."

"Quit talking to yourself Gogglehead, what on earth were you dreaming about? You were shouting random maths things in your sleep. Oh, and you mentioned Jeri."

Takato blushed. "Oh yeah, I dreamt I was in this place, with lots of colours, and I met you, and Kazu, and Jeri, and Ayaka, and you were all being crazy and yelling at me. So then I thought that crazy people were scared of maths, so I started saying maths things, and it was working..."

"You're _crazy, _you know that?"

Takato grinned. "Yeah, I know."

"Hey," Miki said, "It's nearly two O'clock, I don't think Ms. Asagi is like, ever gonna get here. Do you guys wanna just leave?"

"That _is_ a good idea." Ayaka said.

Everyone else agreed, and they all left.

* * *

Okay, chapter over! I think I did pretty good, apart from not updating for days.

Lopmon: Yeah, that was okay.

Me: I'm sure I've done better before.

Terriermon: Well who cares about that! It's not important!

Me: Well, whatever. Anyway, I can't believe I actually forgot to thank my reviewers! I'll thank them now. Thanks lots to duckie lover 151, Raakshii, and Beowulf1111! Yay for them! And also, thanks lots to everyone that took the time to read and review this story, ever. Thank you! Anyway, the next chapter should hopefully be up soon-ish. Wait! One last thing!

Lopmon: What?

Me: You'll never guess what I discovered!

Terriermon: What? Just tell us already!

Me: Confusedly is a word! A real word! It's in the dictionary and everything! I know that doesn't sound very great, but I was _convinced_ that it wasn't!

Terriermon: (sarcasm) Wow, amazing!

Me: I appreciate your sarcasm. Not. Anyway, bye peoples! See you next chapter! : )


	16. A conspiracy, and yet more dreams

Hi people! Welcome to chapter 16!

Terriermon: You keep going so long without updating!

Me: Oh yeah? Well... I was reading about philosophy! And I got a new video camera!

Terriermon: That's no excuse!

Lopmon: How much new stuff are you getting?

Me: Um... Well, I just got a new phone, and a video camera, and in a few months I'm getting a laptop, and I'm moving house and getting new stuff for that...

Terriermon: Cost a lot?

Me: No, my family seems to _love_ buying me things. Only thing I used my own money for was the video camera.

Terriermon: Didn't you also-

Me: That's enough! Anyway, thanks lots to those that reviewed, Raakshii, duckielover 151, and Lupine lover.

Lopmon: Didn't Lupine lover review like, seven times?

Me: No, eight.

Terriermon: What chapters?

Me: 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, and 15.

Lopmon: And you know all of this off the top of your head?

Me: Nope, I've been going and checking.

Terriermon: Cheater!

Me: Oh yeah, well... Uh... Someday I will have a comeback!

Terriermon: _Sure _you will!

Me: Oh shut up! Chapter starting!

* * *

Jeri was walking home, wondering what to think of the day. It had seemed like everything was going so well, but then Kazu just _had_ to ruin it by saying something _stupid_. She sighed.

"I wish that _some_ people were together. Romance is what makes life _interesting_." It didn't seem like anything was going to grant her wish. Suddenly, a thought struck her.

"Hang on, why do I only want other people to be together? Why don't _I _get with someone? It would still be romance, but less people to try and convince."

She smiled. She would implement her plan tomorrow. Just one thing, who? Well, she had all day to think about that.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Takato walked into his house, and was greeted by his mother. "You're home early."

She looked a little panicked, Takato wondered why.

"Yeah, Ms. Asagi never showed up, we stuck around for a few hours, but then figured it was kinda pointless staying if there was no teacher."

"Hmm. Yes. Why don't you go to your room, do homework or something like that. Just, _don't_ come into the kitchen, okay?"

"Okay..."

Takato made his way up to his room, wondering what was going on. Usually she would have at least asked what happened to his teacher, and why can't he go into the kitchen? He sat on the floor and emptied his bag onto it.

"So _that's_ where that sandwich went... What should I do with it? The bin's in the kitchen... I know, I'll throw it out the window!"

He did that, and heard a scream coming from the kitchen no more than a second afterwards.

"Maybe that wasn't the greatest idea..."

"TAKATO!!! WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!!"

His mother came upstairs to yell at him in person.

"What did you just do?!"

"I threw a sandwich out the window, 'cause you said I couldn't go into the kitchen..."

"And _where_ did you get the sandwich?"

"From my bag, I'd say it's been there about a month..."

She walked back downstairs, muttering something about sandwiches scaring innocent bystanders.

Takato looked at his bag, almost afraid to see what else was in there. He went over anyway, and found more homework, and some sort of calendar that said what days there were tests... There was a test tomorrow!

He jumped up in surprise. Was he reading that right? Today was Thursday, the 18th, and the test was Friday, the 19th...

"Oh-no, I don't understand anything we've been doing for the past- Wait, maybe Ms. Asagi won't be in tomorrow... And even if we managed to get a subsitute, they won't know there's a test!"

He felt quite relieved now that he might not have to do a test. Still, might as well try and study or something... He took out his homework for the past while, and looked at it.

"Maths, um... Maybe it won't be division... Let's skip that... English, I don't understand a word of this... Oh forget it, I'll be fine."

He sat down again. It was past three now, but what should he do now?

"I know, I'll call Rika! Even if she yells, at least I won't be bored!"

* * *

(Switch POV)

Rika was at home, she had completed her homework a while ago, and was wondering why she even bothered to come home. Her mother was out, and her grandmother was on the phone, looking like she wouldn't be getting off anytime soon. Suddenly, her phone began to ring.

"Hello?"

"_Hi Rika..."_

"Why are you calling me?"

"_Um... Did you know there's a test tomorrow?"_

That took her by surprise. "Are you serious?!"

"_Yeah, but maybe Ms. Asagi won't show up..."_

"_That's_ what you're relying on?"

"_Well, I tried studying, but that's boring and I didn't get it..."_

"Is that why you called me?"

"_No, actually, I was just bored..."_

"You're an idiot. You know that?"

"_Yeah."_

"(sigh) Idiot."

She hung up, what was that idiot doing calling her, anyway? And was he serious about there being a test tomorrow? Maybe she should call Jeri and ask her... She called Jeri.

"_Hello?"_

"Hi. Gogglehead just called me saying there was a test tomorrow, is that true?"

"_Um, I don't know... I'll ask Ayaka."_

Rika waited while Jeri called Ayaka on the other line.

"_Yep, there is! Wait, that's bad... Hang on, who did you say called you?"_

"Takato."

"_Well, he probably just wanted to talk to you. Aw, that's sweet!"_

"Jeri..."

"_Anyway, that just gave me an idea, so bye! And don't worry, it doesn't involve you!"_

Rika didn't have a chance to say anything else, as Jeri hung up.

"It _better_ not involve me..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka was walking around randomly, Jeri had just called her asking about the test, which probably wouldn't happen, considering Ms. Asagi disappearing like that. She sighed, and thought about what had happened. At least now she _knew_ how much she liked Kazu. But, how could he just _do that_? Does he _never_ think of _anyone_ else's feelings?

"Stupid Kazu, only caring about himself. I wish I could make him sorry, but I know that even if I tried, I couldn't bring myself to do it."

She tried to calm down, and not feel so upset, but it seemed like everything in life was against her. She arrived at the park after a few minutes, and briefly wondered why it was that everyone always somehow managed to end up there. She walked on for a while, and saw Kazu.

"I knew it, life hates me."

Nonetheless, she went up to him.

"Hi." Ayaka said.

"Hi. You're talking to me? Thought you'd hate me or something."

"Is that why you acted so... What's the word... Evil?"

"I did _not_ act _evil_."

"Stupid, then." She said, "I mean, come on. You don't just kiss someone and they say you don't like them."

"_You _kissed _me_!"

"Well you let me! And I bet you liked it!"

"Not as much as you did!"

"Well, I'll admit, I _loved_ it. But come on, don't say you didn't like it."

Kazu blushed slightly. "Fine. Maybe I liked it _a little_. But I wouldn't do it again. Well, I might, if it was someone else and they were hot."

Ayaka felt annoyed, but also like crying. She wondered which would get her further in this situation, and decided to let herself cry. Just to see how Kazu would react.

"You're a horrible person." She looked away as she felt tears filling her eyes.

Kazu saw Ayaka beginning to cry. How did he get into these situations? He didn't want to make her cry, he was just telling the truth... Maybe he had been a _little_ mean, she obviously liked him. But still-

"Oh forget it." He thought. "No point trying to justify it, I've made her cry now. How do you make a girl stop crying? Ugh, that's the question, isn't it?"

"Come on, don't cry. It's not _that _bad, is it?"

Ayaka responded by crying more.

"Okay... Well... Oh come on, you don't expect me to know how to make you stop crying, do you? I might as well be talking to myself here..."

"(sob) Sorry... (sob)" And she started crying even more.

"Oh-no... (sigh) What do I do now?"

Ayaka was still crying, but visibly trying to stop. She just couldn't, though.

Kazu was getting very nervous now, he had absolutely no idea what to do. Well, his instincts were telling him to hug her, and common sense was telling him that would work. Stubborness was refusing to do anything like that, and something else, he wasn't sure what, was telling him that if he hugged her, she might think he liked her, and that would just be bad. Another option was to just stay there until she stopped crying, but that wasn't working out very well. He could walk away, but that's kind of mean, and you can't really just walk away from a crying girl.

"Ugh, fine." He thought. "I'll sacrifice myself and hug her, anything to make her stop crying."

He went over to her and hugged her, which clearly took her by surprise, as she tensed up and stopped crying the second he made contact. After a second or two, he let go.

"Done crying now?"

Ayaka just nodded, somehow unable to say anything. She found her voice quickly though. "Um... I thought..."

"It was just to make you stop crying! I _don't_ like you like that! I'm sorry, I'm sure that's tearing you apart inside, but I can't make myself like you if I don't like you. Make sense?"

"Yeah. Sorry I cried so much, I was trying to stop, but I just couldn't. Sorry. Are we friends?"

"Well, we weren't really in the first place, but we _can_ be. It'll happen, but it kinda takes time. Just try and get over it, okay?"

Ayaka smiled. "Yeah, okay. I'll try and stop liking you. But only if we can be friends."

"Yeah, sure." Kazu smiled too.

"So, anything going on?"

"Yeah, actually. My parents have been acting all weird, and they kicked me out of the house so I wouldn't hear them talking."

"Mine did kinda the same thing, they were whispering like crazy, and then they told me to leave."

"I bet it's a conspiracy! Do you think it's happened to anyone else?"

"I dunno."

"I'll call Takato."

"_Hello?"_

"Hey! Chumly! Tell me, have your parents been acting really weird?"

"_Well, yeah actually. They looked kinda scared or panicked, and they said that under no circumstances can I go into the kitchen."_

"Ha! I _knew_ it was a conspiracy! Bye!

"_Bye..."_

"Well?" Ayaka asked.

"His parents were freaked out, and won't let him into the kitchen."

"Weird. I wonder what's going on?"

"I'll see if it's happening to Kenta's parents too."

He called Kenta's phone, it rang for a few minutes, and there was no answer. The strange thing is, it didn't go to voicemail, it just disconnected.

"Huh, that's weird."

"What happened?"

"He must have had his phone stolen or something, 'cause not only did he not answer, there was no voicemail either. And there was, like, a week ago."

"Maybe his parents stole it, and they're part of this too."

"Yeah, you're right! Weird though..."

Suddenly, Ayaka's phone rang. It was her parents, asking her to come home.

"Okay, okay, fine. I'll come home."

"Who was that, your parents?"

"Yeah, I've gotta go home. See you!"

"See you..."

Kazu decided to go home too, and see if he was allowed in yet.

* * *

(Switch POV, few hours later)

Takato was lying in bed, thinking about the day, and trying not to fall asleep. This seemed to make him fall asleep faster, no matter how much he resisted. His last thought before he fell asleep was wondering what was going on, and hoping sleep would bring answers.

(Dream scene)

Everyone was in the park, having a picnic. 'Everyone' being, Kazu, Ayaka, Henry, Rika, Takato, Jeri, Kenta, and their corresponding digimon. Blackgatomon was there too, for some strange reason. Leomon wasn't there of course, but Calumon was. They were all talking, about something sad. It wasn't clear what.

"Why'd it have to happen?" Ayaka asked.

"It's just destiny." Jeri said.

"I'm sure there's a reason, we'll find out in a while." Henry said.

"Yeah right, this whole thing's a huge conspiracy, I bet they were planning it, all of them! So what makes you think they're gonna tell us?" Kazu asked.

"I'll make them tell us!" Rika said.

Jeri leaned over and kissed Takato, who she was sitting next to. Takato didn't feel anything strange, in fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

"I'm sorry." Kenta said.

"Nah, it's not your fault. Like I said, it's a conspiracy." Kazu said.

"Yeah," Jeri said, "It's not your fault. We all just have bad luck. I wish it didn't have to happen though." She said, sadly.

Everyone else in the group nodded in solemn agreement, except Kenta.

"I still feel like I could have done something-"

"Don't say that. _It's not your fault_." Ayaka said.

"Okay, if you're sure."

"We all just kinda wish it didn't happen, but... There's just some things you can't control, I guess. I feel really bad. I wish I could go back in time-"

"Don't." Takato found himself saying. "There was no way you could have known, none of us could. It's okay."

He kissed her, which also felt normal, and nobody accused him of cheating on Jeri.

Suddenly, lightning started to hit the areas around where the lot of them were sitting. Then, the trees next to them got hit by lightning, fell over, and crushed them all to death.

Takato's sprit was pulled out of his destroyed body, and thrust into another dream scene.

He was with Rika, in a graveyard. He knew that they were on a date. Rika was crying.

"Aw, don't cry Rika. There was nothing we could do."

"I know, but- I just wish people didn't have to die like that!"

He gave her a hug, and she cried into his shoulder. He wondered who it was that they were talking about. He looked at the gravestone in front of him-

Lightning hit the gravestone, destroying it before he could even see any of the letters on it.

Suddenly, Rika faded away. He could feel himself fading too. The last thing he heard before he woke up was Jeri, but he didn't know what she was saying.

(End dream scene)

* * *

Okay, chapter over!

Terriermon: Finally! You've been writing this for the past week, or something like that!

Me: Closer to three days, but anyway.

Lopmon: Do you have some sort of problem with weird dreams, or something?

Me: No! Dreams are going to be very important in this story, and in the sequel!

Lopmon and Terriermon: SEQUEL?!!

Me: Oops, I wasn't meant to reveal that...

Terriermon: You have _got_ to be kidding me! A _sequel?!_

Me: Yeah, get over it.

Lopmon: Well, at least you're planning things out...

Terriermon: That's insane, though!

Me: You're acting like I told you I was pregnant or something...

Terriermon: You better not be!

Me: No, I'm not! That's enough surprises for one day, I'd say.

Lopmon: More than enough.

Me: Anyway, don't forget to review, and the next chapter should be up sometime.


	17. Let's end it with a fight

Hi everyone!! Welcome to chapter 17!! xD

Terriermon: You're crazy. Crazy, you know that?

Me: Oh yeah, well I got a _pilates ball_!

Lopmon: Crazy and random.

Me: You bet!! Anyway, I'm excited, because I've finally got some sort of plot-thingy for this! Yay!

Lopmon: And what would that be?

Me: Something. My plot or whatever, is foreshadowing the big thing which will be revealed in the end, and expanded on in the sequel.

Terriermon: I know what your big thing is!!

Lopmon: How?

Me: I can't have been _that_ obvious...

Terriermon: Don't worry, I won't tell.

Me: You better not.

Lopmon: Can I guess?

Me: So long as you don't guess right.

Terriermon: Just say no comment.

Me: Good idea!

Lopmon: Someone dies?

Me: No comment.

Lopmon: Kazu eventually starts to like Ayaka?

Me: Great idea! I mean, no comment.

Lopmon: Jeri gets with Takato?

Me: No comment. This is getting hard! I want so much to comment on all your guesses!

Lopmon: Hmm... Does it involve someone who has been in the story a lot?

Me: Let's cut this short, I'm sure innocent reader-people are getting bored, let's start the chapter!

Lopmon: Aww...

* * *

It was Friday morning, and everyone was in school, wondering what was going to happen, if a teacher would show up. Word of the test had spread, and most people were hoping that there would be no teacher. After not very long, Ms. Asagi walked in, to the sound of a lot of groans from those who hated tests.

"Good morning class. As some of you may know, there was meant to be a test today. However, there will be no test, and school is going to be officially out for the summer at the end of today."

There were a lot of cheers, although a few people wondered what could have happened to result in school being ended a week early, along with the test being cancelled.

Once the class had quietened down, Henry spoke up. "Why? Is there something going on? Or are you just trying to be really nice?"

"Well... You'll find out. There's no point telling you all now, and I suppose _I'll_ never have to. _Someone_ will, but _I_ won't be seeing any of you again. Anyway, you don't need to know yet. Just look on the bright side, school ends today, and no test."

Cheers went up again, even though that had explained nothing.

Rika stood up and spoke above the remaining noise. "That didn't explain anything, and Henry's right, something's _got_ to be up!"

Kazu yelled back to her. "Look, who _cares_ if something's up? We get something good out of it, so why question it?"

"There's got to be some reason why though."

"There doesn't _need_ to be a reason why, just go with it!"

Rika sat down again, and tried to think about what could have happened. Her mind quickly started drifting though, and she found herself wondering what Jeri's plan was.

"Although, she said she's gonna do it today, so I guess I'll be finding out later."

* * *

(Switch POV, later)

Jeri sat at her desk nervously. It was almost lunchtime, which was pretty much her only chance to carry out her plan. But she was so nervous, she felt like she was shaking, and was surprised that no-one was giving her any strange looks. She took a deep breath to try and calm down, and tried to at least _look_ like she was paying some bit of attention to the lesson. She thought her plan over. It was easy really, just go up to Takato, and ask him out. Makes it sound a bit _too_ simple really.

"Although, I couldn't ask him in front of- well, whoever he's going to be with. I'll ask if I can talk to him _alone_, and then ask him. I wonder what he'll say..."

Suddenly, there came the words she had been dreading.

"Alright class, you can go for lunch now."

She felt her heart beating at what felt like a thousand miles an hour, and tried, once again, to calm down. She stood up, and actually felt like she was going to faint. She like she was falling, and everything started to go dark-

She stopped herself before she could get that far, she _had_ to do this, she just _had_ to!

"I wonder," She thought, "Did Rika feel like this before _she_ asked Takato out? I suppose it must have been a bit easier, considering she'd done it before."

* * *

Jeri walked around, she couldn't see Takato anywhere. It had only been a couple of minutes, but still...

Suddenly, Rika walked up to her.

"Hey." Rika said. "Are you okay? You looked kinda like you were gonna pass out a while ago, and you've been walking around in circles..."

Jeri resisted the strange urge to cry. "Y-yeah, I'm fine... Just- Never mind. It doesn't matter."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, see you." She started walking away.

"See ya then..."

After walking and looking for another minute or so, Jeri finally saw Takato, he was with Kazu and Henry. She went up to him. She felt extremely nervous again, but tried to fight it down.

"Takato?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I talk to you alone for a minute?"

"Yeah, sure." Takato said, completely oblivious to Jeri barely repressed nervousness.

"A minute, I'll be timing ya chumly!" Kazu yelled, as the two walked away.

"So, what was it you wanted to talk about?" Takato asked.

"Um..." There was the nervousness again. "Will you go out with me?"

Takato looked completely stunned. He had _not_ seen _that_ coming. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, in an attept to find some words. He remained unable to say anything, in a state of utter shock, even worse than when Rika asked him out. Which was quite strange when you think about it, Jeri was the far more likely of the two to ask him out. His mouth remained closed as he looked blankly at Jeri. His head was swimming, there wasn't that much information to take in, but he was compltetely unable to really get what had just happened.

"What?"

Jeri took a deep breath. It was hard enough to say it once, but to have to repeat it? And from the look on his face, it seemed like he definitely heard what she said.

"I _said_, will you go out with me?"

Takato came back to reality, and felt everything rushing around him. Almost like it was deciding whether to come crashing down or not... Suddenly, everything felt still, in the world, and, to some extent, in his mind. He looked at Jeri, and wondered what to say. Here was a nervous girl, who probably liked him, and she was waiting for an answer to what had to be _the_ hardest question in the world.

"What do I do?" He thought. "I don't like her that way, I can't say yes. But, just look at her. And she's been through so much in her life, she can't have everything just crushed like that. And she _is_ kinda cute... But, she's scary, and crazy, and if we were together, I'd never know what to do in case I'd upset her in some way. And it's like she's just too good for me. I used to like her, I told Rika I liked her. Why? Why do so many girls have to like me? Weird, most boys would be happy about that. Well, I guess I'm just crazy or girl-phobic or something. Hang on, back to the question. Yes or no? I suppose no, but I can't say that to Jeri, she's _Jeri_. You just can't do that to her, I don't know what it is about her, but she's just that kind of person you can't be mean to, and can't say no to. Why can't this be easy? Let's see, what happened when I said no to Rika... Okay, so I definitely _can't_ say no to her, she'll cry for the next _year_ or so, and probably set her friends on me. Rika, Miki, and Ayaka... Yeah, that's not good. But I can't say yes, I couldn't if I tried, and I couldn't if I wanted to. What do I do?"

"Takato? Are you gonna answer me? If- If the answer is no, that's okay."

From the way she had to fight to get the sentence out without bursting into tears, it definitely would _not_ be okay if he said no. But he didn't need to know that.

"Jeri... I... I don't know. I just don't know. Sorry."

"Well, it's better than no!" Jeri said optimistically, faking a smile and trying to seem happy.

Then Takato started to cry.

"Takato? What's wrong? Don't cry."

"I don't know what's wrong! No, I do know! It's not fair! So many girls are asking me out! It's not fair!"

"But it was just Rika, then me, right?"

"Yeah, but both of you are like five people! (sob) Sorry I'm crying and (sob) and everything!"

"That's okay, I'm sorry I asked you out, I wouldn't have if I knew it would make you cry."

Takato tried to calm down. "That's alright. Do you- Do you like me? Like, in that way..."

Jeri blushed and looked away slightly. "Well, I guess if I have to answer that, no. I don't think so, anyway. I was just asking you out because, you know the way I like to play matchmaker? Well, I figured it would be easier, if I wanted romance, to be one of the people, instead of trying to convince two people who don't like each other in the first place to go out. And then, I was trying to figure out who to ask, and you were the first person I thought of."

This shocked Takato almost as much as her asking him out. "What?! Jeri, here's some advice, only ask people out if you like them, not just for fun. It saves a _lot_ of trouble. And if you're still looking for an answer, the answer's no. Sorry."

Jeri blinked, startled. "Um... Oh... Okay... You know, I think I actually thought I liked you right up until you asked me if I liked you or not, then I realised I didn't. I think I accidentally convinced myself that I was in love with you when I wasn't. Anyway, sorry for making you cry, and sorry for asking you out with out really liking you."

"That's okay... Please don't do it again though, not to me, not to anyone."

"Alright!" Jeri smiled and walked away. "Oh, and I won't tell you not to tell, but I won't tell if you don't want me to."

"I don't mind."

Jeri continued walking away, and Takato went back to Kazu and Henry, the former of which seeming to actually have timed it, as he was staring at his phone.

"Ha! That was at _least_ 5 minutes! Not one!"

"Um..."

"Don't listen to him." Henry said. "It was actually about 10 minutes, he spent the first 5 trying to figure out if his phone had a timer. Anyway, what happened?"

"Well... I don't really want to talk about it..."

"Aw, come on! If a girl something like that to _me_, then I'd tell _everyone_!"

"But you don't even know what she said..." Takato pointed out.

"Well, I bet she told you to meet her in the train station at midnight-"

"And just how many romance moves have you been watching?" Henry interrupted, smiling.

"Me? Romance movies? Never!"

"Anyway, I think I _will_ tell you guys, even if it's just so Kazu doesn't make anymore weird guesses. She asked me out, I asked her if she liked me that way, she said no, so I said no, and said that if she's gonna ask someone out, she should probably like them first."

"But that would've only took 5 minutes, at the most!" Kazu said.

"Well, for a lot of time I was trying to figure out what to say..."

"What would you have said if she _did_ like you?" Kazu asked.

"Um... Either I don't know, or maybe..."

"Well you'd need to answer sometime!"

"Well, I'd come up with answer if that actually happened, but it didn't, so let's all be happy for that."

Then it was time for class again.

* * *

"Now class," Ms. Asagi said, "I've actually run out of things to teach, so let's have a discussion! What shall we discuss?"

Jeri put her hand up. "Is it stupid to ask someone out if you don't like them?"

Before Ms. Asagi could reply, Ayaka put her hand up too. "What's a suitable method of killing someone who kissed you and then said he didn't like you?"

At least five other hands went up, but Ms. Asagi didn't allow them a chance to talk.

"Let's discuss something else. You're all too young to be thinking about those kind of things."

Some looks went around the class, as not only were they _thinking_ these things, they were _living_ them.

"Anyway, let's talk about something _nice_, like... Dreams!"

Kazu made a slight attempt to put his hand up before talking, although it didn't go above his head. "Nah, let's talk about something _cool_, like _dinosaurs!_"

Ayaka replied. "Oh yeah? You're just afraid to admit the SICK THINGS YOU DREAM ABOUT!!"

"WELL HOW WOULD _YOU_ KNOW WHAT I DREAM ABOUT, UNLESS YOU'VE BEEN _STALKING _ME!!" Kazu screamed back.

"Oh yeah, get over here and fight me in person! Or are you too scared, and want to stay behind Miki?"

Kazu ran over to Ayaka, who was debating in her head very quickly what to do next.

"Hadn't we both agreed to be friends? Well, I guess I can forget that now. It would've been a nice friendship, but we were meant to be enemies. Now, I can either kiss him, or hit him with a chair... Well, the chair would be a more effective battle strategy, but kissing people is _fun_. Kiss it is! That oughta shock him anyway."

The second Kazu stopped running, Ayaka grabbed ahold of him by his shoulders, and before he could have any sort of chance to see it coming, pulled him close and kissed him, for a good five seconds straight. Having now stunned him sufficiently, she figured she'd do something that would actually _hurt_ him now.

"Sorry Miki!" She said, as she threw Kazu down onto Miki's desk, as hard as she could. Miki had only gotten away just in time, as her desk flipped over and flew up, with the force of being hit so hard, and fell on Kazu, who had been just about to try and get up.

Ayaka stood patiently waiting for Kazu to get up. After all, it wasn't fair for her to get _all_ the hits in, was it?

Kazu jumped up, and grabbed the desk, ignoring the immense throbbing pain in his head, and hit Ayaka with the desk. She tried to get out of the way, but only succeeded in getting whacked in the shoulder instead of her face.

She thought quickly, and grabbed the desk and pulled it down. That only resulted in Kazu pulling it back at the same time, resulting in both of them dropping it. It was now a question of who would react first, and what they would do.

Ayaka reacted first, by a split second. She kicked the desk as hard as she could, it bashed into Kazu, who had bent down to try and pick it up. It narrowly avoided his head, as he stood up quickly to try not to get hit. It had made contact before he stood up though, and the movement scraped his hands, and if that wasn't bad enough, it hit his legs at the same time.

He almost began to think of giving up, but brushed the thought aside before he could pursue it any further, and focused on the fight at hand. He picked up Miki's chair, and threw it at Ayaka. She had been distracted at the time, and it hit her in the chest, knocking her down. Kazu ran over to her and started kicking her. She didn't do much to stop him, she just tried to take the hits as painlessly as possible.

* * *

Everyone was watching the fight, wondering what would happen next, and why Ms. Asagi wasn't intervening. The reason for that was, that as soon as the yelling started, she left the room. It was up to someone to stop them before one them recieved some serious damage.

Henry ran over to the two of them. "Stop fighting! One of you is going to get really hurt, if you haven't already!"

He pulled Kazu away from Ayaka, and helped Ayaka up. He stood between the two of them, in case they tried to fight again.

"Why are you guys fighting? Can't you just be friends? Or at least just fight with words?"

"Well, she started it." Kazu said.

"No way, he did!"

"Please stop arguing, just- Just go sit down, as far away from each other as possible."

Meanwhile, everyone else had sat down again, after having stood up to see the fight. Ayaka and Kazu did as they had been told, and sat down at two conveniently empty desks at opposite sides of the room.

"Shouldn't someone go find Ms. Asagi?" Henry said.

"School's nearly over, it doesn't really matter. She probably decided to go home early while we were all distracted." Rika said.

"Okay, but now what? No more fights, please!" Henry said.

"I don't know..." Takato said.

"I know!" Jeri said. "Let's all talk like we had been going to! Come on everyone, sit in a circle!"

Everyone obeyed and sat in a circle.

"So... What are we gonna talk about? Dreams?" Miki said.

"Yeah, okay! Anyone had any weird dreams lately?"

"I have!" Cried a few voices simultaneously.

"Alright, who's gonna go first? I know, Takato can!" Jeri said, happily.

"Okay," Takato said, "How many should I say? One?"

"Yeah, one'll do."

"Alright. Well, I dreamt that all the tamers, except for the little kids, and Ayaka was there for some reason, and the digimon were having a picnic. And we were talking, saying about something being really sad. Like, people kept saying things like, 'Why did it have to happen, it's so sad.' And stuff like that, except for Kenta, he kept on saying he was sorry, and he felt like he could have done something, and we all kept saying it wasn't his fault. And then there was loads of lightning striking everywhere around us, and then, becuase we were in a forest, it hit all the trees around us, and then the trees all fell and killed us."

Everyone was giving him strange looks.

"What? I can't help what I dream about."

"Um, can I go next?" Henry asked.

"Yeah sure!" Jeri said, as she seemed to be in charge of all this.

"Okay, well... Actually, I don't want to say it."

"I'll go then." Rika said. "I dreamt that I was walking in the middle of the night, and I had a gun, and I killed everyone. Then I was really lonely. I also had another dream that Gogglehead was killed in a car crash."

"You have weird dreams." Kazu said.

"Oh yeah, well shut up. Why don't you say what _you_ dream about."

"Fine then, I will. I dreamt that I- No wait, that really happened. I dreamt... I don't dream, okay?"

"Yeah right-" Ayaka began, beofre being interrupted by Jeri.

"Don't start this again!"

"Okay, sorry Jeri..."

"Did you have any weird dreams, Ayaka?"

"Um..." She remembered her dream about her and Kazu, and decided not to say anything about it. "No."

"Okay, what about you, Miki?"

"Oh, well... I guess I can say it. I dreamt that I was a princess, and Kenta was Beelzemon, and-"

"I don't need to hear this." Rika said. "I don't think anyone else does either. We all know you love Kenta, we don't need to hear a messed up romantic dream to prove it."

"Aww..."

Ms. Asagi walked into the room. "Ah, so the fight's over."

"It's been over for a _long_ time, where've you been?" Kazu said.

"I just didn't want to see you two fighting like that. Anyway, you can all go home now if you like. Technically the schoolday isn't over yet, but I think you guys can go home."

A few cheers went up.

"Cool!"

"Brilliant!" Kazu and Ayaka exclaimed at the same time.

Everyone felt great, really happy and excited. The schoolyear was _finally_ over! They all went their separate ways, smiling, feeling like nothing could destroy their happiness. Well, all except a few. Those few _were_ happy, but couldn't help remembering the fact that their parents were hiding something, and that something was important.

* * *

Yay! Chapter over!

Terriermon: Weird ending. And how long is this story gonna go on for?

Me: 3 more chapters, not counting this one. 20 chapters altogether.

Lopmon: I see nothing being resolved.

Me: Well, depends what you mean by _resolved_. Besides, there's gonna be a sequel. And quite possible a sequel to that.

Terriermon: What _happened_ to you?! You used to not know what to call your chapters, or what the point of the story was, and you used to write everything without any idea for a plot! But now, here you are, planning a sequel for a sequel! (starts crying)

Me: Um... Okay... (backs away slowly) Right...

Lopmon: Aww, poor Terriermon! (hugs Terriermon)

Me: Okay... Well... Right. Anyway, please reivew, next chapter should be up soon-ish, and thanks lots to all those who have read and reviewed already! Bye! : )


	18. Questions and speculation

Hey everyone! Welcome to chapter 18! Yay! It's the 3rd last chapter of this story!! Can you believe that?

Terriermon: I know, it's mad! You'll have actually finished your first major story! I'm amazed!

Lopmon: To think that the longest thing you wrote before this was only five chapters!

Me: Yeah, I know. That's cool. There's gonna be a sequel too, I don't know how long that's gonna be, though. Anyway, thanks _millions_ to all you great people who have been reading and reviewing, I seriously wouldn't have gotten this far without you all! Also, if you people have any ideas for names for the sequel, I can't come up with any, so if you have ideas, I might use them.

Terriermon: I thought you had a name?

Me: I have two possibilities, but nothing definite.

Lopmon: So you're asking all these people to help you? You know you'll either end up with loads of names, or none.

Me: If it's millions, I'll either pick my favorite, blend a few together, or use one of my own. If I get none, I'll use one of my own. It works out, whatever happens.

Lopmon: Suppose.

Terriermon: You know, we probably shouldn't be thinking about how much you've done, it's like when you're climbing a mountain, right before you reach the top, going: 'Wow, I sure am high up.' It's true, but you're gonna get distracted or something.

Me: True, true. You're definitely right. But at least I can read though the story as many times as I need to.

Terriermon: Yeah.

Me: Anyway, chapter starting!

* * *

Henry arrived home, and when he got there, noticed his parents were sitting on the sofa talking, just like yesterday. They noticed him walking in, and ran into the kitchen. He could hear his mother making a phone call.

He sighed. They weren't going to tell him what was happening. But why? Usually they told him everything- Well, except for the digimon disappearing after the D-reaper, and then re-appearing a few weeks later, neither with any prior warning. Henry wondered what was going on, and if _anyone_ was _ever_ going to find out. Well, obvoiusly, from what he'd heard, everyone's parents knew. But, why were they keeping it a secret from the kids? They could all handle it, they'd handled plenty of big things in the past, so anything life could throw at them now would be no big deal, right?

"Well, apart from romance." He thought, remembering everyone's various romantic problems. Takato being asked out twice, him being used by Rika, Rika being rejected, Ayaka and Kazu's strange sort of enemy-friendship, and of course, Jeri's matchmaking attempts.

"But romance aside, there's nothing we can't take? Unless something happened without us noticing, something big and new infiltrated Hypnos, and maybe the digimon will need to go back to the digital world again, or worse, maybe they'll need to be sacrificed to defeat whatever this thing is!"

He felt himself nearly starting to cry, and tried to reassure himself.

"I'm sure it's something small only, or maybe it's good news! In fact, they're probably way more likely to be hiding good news from us than bad news! But, they looked kind of upset. And Takato said his parents had looked similar. Everyone's parents have been acting a _bad_ kind of suspicious. I wish I knew what it was..."

* * *

(Switch POV)

Ayaka was at home, and her parents were acting very secretive again. They were in the kitchen, and talking very quietly, but very panickedly. She wasn't going to ask them what was up, she was just glad they didn't make her leave the house again. She went up to her room.

"I wonder what's going on... Maybe... Maybe my prank calling Kazu got around, and everyone's parents are working together to make sure that never happens again... Or maybe it's to do with the Tamers... But then why would all the non-tamer parents be involved? _Everyone's_ parents are involved... Well, everyone in the class, anyway... And Ms. Asagi is in on it too. I wish I knew what was going on..."

Suddenly, her phone rang. She could see it was Kazu. "I wonder what he wants..." She thought.

She answered. "Hello?"

"_Hi. I was just calling because, well, just... I thought you wanted to be friends with me. Why were you so mean to me today? I know fighting can be fun and all, but you really did start it. You did it twice, asked me to fight, and when we were fighting, you were the one getting all the hits in. Is this because of me not liking you? I don't want us to be enemies Ayaka..."_

This made Ayaka feel pretty bad. She hadn't been thinking at the time, insulting and hurting Kazu just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't exactly thinking, I was just doing."

"_Well you obviously don't want to be friends that much."_

"Sorry."

"_That doesn't really help, does it? It doesn't undo anything! As hard as this may be for you to get your head around, I don't like being hit with, or bashed into, desks. And even harder for you to understand, I _don't like_ hitting you with desks either! I don't like hurting someone I was meant to be friends with. I wasn't exactly thinking either, but you _did_ start it! I thought we could be friends... But I guess that's what I get for trusting a girl. That's what I get for trusting _you_."_

Ayaka was hurt by this. "I didn't mean it, though! I _do_ want to be friends with you! I'm sorry! Can you forgive me? Please? Just this once?"

Kazu hesitated. _Should_ he forgive her? _"A-Ayaka, I don't- I'll think about it. But probably not. Who knows, we might be friends later in life. But for now, you just blew it. Okay? Bye." _He hung up.

Ayaka stared at the phone, not believing what she had just heard. Well, she _did_ believe it. That was the problem. And, she realised,_ everything he said was right. _She _did_ blow it. She just destroyed what could have been a great friendship. She started to cry, wishing she could go back in time, and make things right, by resisting the temptation to insult and hurt Kazu.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Kazu stared blankly into space after that phone call with Ayaka. He didn't know what to think, who's fault it was, anything. It _would_ have been a pretty good friendship, but, enemies aren't meant to be friends. Right? He hoped he had made the right decision.

"But, technically I didn't _really_ make any decision. I just said 'I'll think about it, but probably not.' I didn't really_ decide_ anything. I hope Ayaka's okay... She's probably really upset. I might have been a little harsh, but still... (sigh) I'm sure we can always be friends again, but why be friends with someone who insults you and hurts you?"

He felt tears escaping his eyes. Why did everything have to be so hard? People's parents keeping secrets, Ayaka liking him, then acting so mean, and just _what_ was going on? It's probably something big... He just felt so overwhelmed by everything, he just couldn't handle it. He sat down on his bed, buried his face in his hands, and began to cry. He hoped his parents wouldn't notice, but then again, they were so busy with all their phone calls and everything, they wouldn't notice a nuclear war.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Rika arrived home, just to be shooed away by her mother second she got there.

"Sorry Rika, you have to leave. Don't ask me why, you just do. You can come back later, I'll call you and tell you when." All the while pushing Rika away from the house.

"Well that's a new one, usually you're trying to convince me to stay. Just, stop pushing me!"

Her mother complied.

"What's going on? Everyone's parents have been keeping secrets and acting suspicious. You're hiding something, you all are. What is it? I know it's something big, but I can handle it. Everyone can. Just _tell_ me. Tell _anyone_."

"Rika, I'm sorry. I can't tell you, it's for your own good. It's for all your friends' good as well. You'll find out when the time is right."

"The time will _never _be right. And even if you _do_ ever think it is, I'm sure it'll be too late." And with that, she walked away, which was actually what her mother had wanted, but that's not why she was leaving.

She was hoping to find someone else who had been kicked out, and maybe they might have some information about what was going on.

* * *

(Switch POV)

Henry was sitting on the sofa, wondering what to do. He noticed that Terriermon and Lopmon had disappeared. Were they involved in this whole conspiracy thing too? Well, if they were, it shouldn't really be too hard to get some information out of them. Lopmon couldn't really stand up for herself, and Terriermon would be easily bribed. He figured they would most likely be at the park, so he set off for said place.

* * *

When he got to the park, he noticed Rika walking around. He went up to her.

"Hi."

"Hi. You been kicked out too?"

"No, I just got really bored, and thought Terriermon and Lopmon might be here. Have you seen Renamon around lately? Because I think that all the digimon just might be involved in all of this."

"Actually, I haven't seen her around... I bet they _are_ a part of this! I wonder where they are..."

"Probably Guilmon's place."

"Yeah, let's go."

* * *

They quickly arrived at Guilmon's place, and indeed the digimon _were_ there. Henry and Rika went over.

"Hey!" Rika yelled, to get their attention. "What's going on? We know you guys are in this conspiracy too! So spill it already!"

"Rika, I'm sorry. We can't tell you yet. We _will_ tell you, but- We just aren't ready to reveal it." Renamon said. "All of us, and your parents, just aren't ready to tell you. It's not you, you're able to take it. It's us, we can't tell you. We just can't."

"Why not?" Henry asked.

"It's too hard..." Lopmon replied.

"Yeah, even I can't do it. And you know me, I always say everything!" Terriermon said.

"Well that just sucks." Rika said. "When is someone gonna tell?"

"No-one knows." Renamon said.

Rika growled and turned away. "Fine. Come on, let's go." She said, grabbing Henry and walking away.

* * *

"That's stupid. Why can't they tell us?" Rika asked, obviously angered by the digimons' refusal to tell.

"I don't know. It must be big, and it must be something bad."

"But how come _they_ get to know, and _we_ don't! Whatever it is, I mean, come on! If it's going to be a big shock, then we're all way better able to take it then the _digimon!"_

"I know. It's for our own good, I'd say. I'm sure they've all got a reason."

"But _why?_ _What_ reason?! This is driving me _insane_!!"

"Rika... I know. It's making me kinda crazy too. But we _will_ find out."

"Damn right we will! I'll _make_ them tell! What could it be, though?"

"I don't know... Maybe the D-reaper is coming back, maybe someone- I don't know. Maybe... Maybe they're trying to bring Leomon back, they _have_ talked about it, and maybe they're just keeping it from us until it's definite."

"That makes sense. _Except, _the parents of _everyone_ in the class are involved. That _could_ make sense, but a lot of people, me included, noticed our parents being panicked, upset, and scared. So it must be something bad."

"I wish I knew. I wish _any_ of us knew."

"Me too."

* * *

Chapter over! I know it's short, but it was getting kinda repetitive.

Terriermon: How so?

Me: It basically just went, "I wish I knew, I wonder what's going on?" and "I can't tell." and "Why?" Over and over. I think it was getting repetitive. Anyway, there's a chance that the next chapter will be even shorter.

Lopmon: Why? So you can fit things into your 20 chapters properly?

Me: Pretty much, yeah. Besides, I didn't know what else to do here.

Terriermon: Ha ha! Crashing and burning so near the end!

Me: Hey! I'll manage it! It'll be fine. I just kinda need to prolong everything, because I refuse to reveal it 'til the end. So next chapter might be pointless again.

Lopmon: Oh well. Hopefully your readers will stick with you until the end.

Me: Well, yeah I sure hope so. I wonder if I've been building it up too much...

Lopmon: Well, Terriermon told me what your big thing is, and quite frankly, the things you're doing to fill up the chapters without revealing much, _are_ repetitive and don't make much sense.

Me: : ( I knew it.

Lopmon: Oh relax, you'll be fine. It's only 2 pointless chapters out of 20. If you make the last one good, then it'll be fine.

Me: Okay! Anyway, keep reading and reviewing people! And the next chapter should be up soon!


	19. Lots of talking and fun

Hi everyone! Welcome to chapter 19, the second last chapter of this story! Yay!

Terriermon: Hey, I've got a great idea, why don't you reveal all your secrets?

Me: What?! No, not now!

Lopmon: Secrets?

Terriermon: Her real name, her age, both of which I know, and what actually happened in the hairbrush incedent.

Me: Hairbrush incedent?! No way am I saying anything about that!

Lopmon: Why, what happened?

Me: It's a long and quite possibly interesting story, but the short version is, a stupid person made up a rumor about me, and lots of people believed it.

Terriermon: Yeah, right.

Me: Oh shut up.

Terriermon: You didn't object to telling anything else, you know.

Me: True.

Terriermon: Come on then, what's wrong? Afraid?

Me: ...

Terriermon: Ha ha!

Lopmon: That's just mean, Terriermon.

Me: Well, I'm only afraid of Fanfiction reading this and kicking me off the site...

Lopmon: Why? How old _are_ you?

Me: 12.

Lopmon: ...

Terriermon: And your real name is Alice!

Lopmon: That's a nice name.

Me: Anyway... Uh... Let's talk about something else...

Terriermon: Ha ha, you're embarrassed!

Me: Chapter starting now!

* * *

It was Friday evening, and the digimon were all still gathered in Guilmon's house-thing.

Terriermon groaned. "Why are we all still here? There's like, nine of us all stuffed into this tiny little space." He paused to think for a second. "How do all of us fit, anyway?"

"I made it bigger!" Guilmon said.

"You're always makin' this stupid thing bigger." Impmon said. "And Bunny-ears over there has got a point. Why _are _we all still here? Better question, why am _I _here? My Tamers are kids, I won't be telling them anything, and even if I did, it would take a while to spread to anyone that mattered."

"Wait, we're just here so we won't tell?!" Terriermon said. "That's just plain stupid!"

"You're a loudmouth and you're easily bribed." Renamon pointed out.

"Oh shut up. This is all gonna turn into a big reality TV show if we don't get out of here soon." He replied.

Lopmon sighed. "I don't want to be here either, but it's necessary. Don't ask me why, it just _is_."

"Hey Renamon, what was all that earlier about not being _able_ to tell?" Terriermon asked.

"Yeah, actually. I know I went along with it, but what was the point? Was it because it sounded a lot better than simply saying that we wouldn't tell?" Lopmon asked.

"Exactly." Renamon said. "I don't want to have to keep anything from Rika, and that was the best excuse I could come up with in that amount of time. Why did you two go along with it?"

"It sounds better with three people than with one." Terriermon said.

"That's pretty much my reason too. And, I _did_ actually kind of feel like that a bit. Notice that none of us are actually saying it..."

"We don't _need_ to say it." Impmon said. "Everyone all knows what we're talking about, and there's no point saying it if we don't have to. Save it for when we eventually tell them all."

"About telling them," Terriermon said, "Why don't we just tell the Tamers, and let _them_ tell everyone else that needs to know."

"That's kind of hard on our partners, isn't it?" Lopmon asked.

"Hey Loppy, why are _you_ here anyway? Your partner's a kid too." Impmon said.

"There's a slight risk of me telling Henry. I don't think I would, but... Besides, it wouldn't be fair if I was exempt from this. And the same applies to you."

"You know," Renamon said, "We wouldn't all be stuck here if our Tamers' parents hadn't insisted on not telling them. I don't even understand why that is. If they had just been informed, yesterday, or the day before, or whenever it was that it happened, this wouldn't be happening, and everything wouldn't be so complicated."

Terriermon, Lopmon and Impmon nodded in agreement.

Calumon flew over to them. "Do you guys wanna play tag?"

"There's no room in here, Calumon." Renamon said.

"Yeah there is! It's a special kind of tag that Guardromon made up. Instead of running, everyone all counts to ten really fast, and the first one to finish tips somone and says; 'Tag! You're it!' To someone, and the person who's it has to watch all the other people counting and tell them who finished first."

"That sounds easy." Lopmon said. "I'll play."

"I'll play too." Terriermon said.

"Yeah, me too." Impmon said.

"Yay! Does Renamon want to play?" Calumon asked.

"Oh, alright." She said, sighing.

"Yay!" Calumon yelled, as he raced off to where Guilmon, Monodramon, Guardromon, and Marineangemon were, the rest following.

* * *

(Few hours later)

It was 8 O'Clock at night, and all the digimon had stopped playing counting tag, and were either talking, or sleeping.

Guilmon, Monodramon, Calumon, and Marineangemon were sleeping, and all the rest were talking.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I _hate_ this _stupid_ place!" Impmon said.

"Calm down! We _know_ you hate it here. We hate it too. I'd say it's just until tomorrow, so deal with it." Renamon said.

"Can we play truth or dare?" Terriermon asked.

"No." Renamon said.

"Aw, why not?"

"Just no."

"Why? Something bad happen the last time you played it?"

"No, I've never played it. I just don't want to."

"Well how do you know if you've never played?"

Renamon sighed. "Terriermon... Just no, okay?"

"Fine. What about spin the bottle?"

"That's cool, let's play that!" Impmon said.

"No no no! Isn't that the game where you have to kiss people?" Lopmon said fearfully.

"We don't even _have_ a bottle, or _anything_ that spins. Beisides, we aren't playing."

"Why are you so _mean_?!" Terriermon yelled. "It's boring here! And the only things _you're_ happy with playing are counting tag, and I spy! And I hate those games! And I hate you, too!"

Renamon was a little surprised by Terriermon's outburst, but it didn't show.

Terriermon walked over to the other side of the room, where the sleeping people were, and sulked.

Renamon sighed. "What do you think we should do?" She asked.

"I guess we might as well play truth or dare, but nothing too extreme." Lopmon said.

"I'm for truth or dare too." Impmon said.

Renamon looked over at Guardromon. He was asleep. She sighed again. "Okay, truth or dare it is. One of you tell Terriermon that."

"Okay." Lopmon went over to Terriermon.

"We're playing truth or dare."

"Cool! Yes! I _knew_ sulking would work!" Terriermon exclaimed, jumping up.

Lopmon laughed, but only a little. The two of them went back over to Renamon and Impmon.

"Yay! Truth or dare!" Terriermon said, happy once again. "How about Renamon goes first?"

"Okay," Renamon said, "Impmon, truth or dare?"

"Wha? Why me? Um... Truth?"

"Right... Which of your partners do you like more?"

"... That's not fair!"

"Aw come on Impy." Terriermon said. "It's not like they're here."

"Fine. Ai I guess. Terriermon, truth or dare?"

"Dare!!"

"Well someone's sure hyper... Um... I dare you to kiss whoever you prefer. Counting me and the sleeping people out."

"Can I kiss myself?" Terriermon asked, blushing.

"No. Lopmon or Renamon." Impmon grinned. This should be fun.

"Uh... Oh come on! Don't give me a choice!"

"I'm not. Your only choice is to just pick one!"

Terriermon looked at the two. He would much prefer to kiss Lopmon, because not only would she not hurt him, but she was cute and pretty. He looked at Renamon. She probably _wouldn't_ hurt him, but she was still scary. But, unlike Lopmon, she wouldn't get absolutely terrified and hate him forever. Suddenly, Terriermon thought of something, which clearly indicated which one he should go for.

"Renamon's about 4 feet taller than me... I'd need a ladder or something to reach her. Lopmon it is then."

"Hurry up and pick one already!" Impmon yelled impatiently.

Terriermon blushed. "Okay fine." He grabbed Lopmon, pulled her over to him and kissed her.

Lopmon blushed and leapt about 10 feet backwards. "That was scary! Next time somone has to kiss somebody, please have it not be me!"

"Sorry... It's just, you were the obvious choice, Renamon's like way taller than me, I'd need a ladder practically..."

Lopmon laughed at the image. "That's okay then, I guess." She came back over to the rest.

"Do want to have my go?" Terriermon asked.

"Um... Okay."

"Hey! You can't do that!" Impmon said.

"Yes I can." Terriermon replied.

"Urgh, fine. I won't bother getting into a fight over it."

"Okay..." Lopmon said. "Renamon, truth or dare?"

"Dare, I suppose."

"Cool! I dare you to kiss Impmon!"

"No way is she kissing me!!" Impmon yelled.

"Too bad, Impy!" Terriermon said.

"Stop calling me that!"

"Come on, Loppy!" Terriermon said, as he went to hold Impmon back. Lopmon quickly joined him.

"Come on, Renamon!" Lopmon said. "Kiss him already!"

"Can I change my decision?"

"No!" Terriermon and Lopmon yelled together.

"Oh, fine." She kissed Impmon on the cheek quickly.

Terriermon and Lopmon let go of Impmon and started laughing hysterically. Impmon stayed frozen where he was, blushing bright red.

Terriermon and Lopmon soon stopped laughing.

"I'm not playing this stupid game anymore." Impmon said.

"Oh grow up, it's just truth or dare, it doesn't count!" Terriermon said.

Impmon picked him up, threw him against the wall, and went over to the sleeping people.

Lopmon ran over to Terriermon. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah..." Terriermon said weakly. "I think the game's over..." He stood up.

Lopmon hugged him. "Aw, poor Terriermon! ...Sorry, I've been around Suzie too much..." She said, letting him go.

Terriermon smiled and laughed nervoulsy. "Yeah... What do you wanna do now?"

"Sleep I guess."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

* * *

(Switch POV)

It was around 9 at night, Henry was at home watching TV. His parents had left a while ago. He had given up on trying to find out what was going on, nobody was going to help anyway.

Jaarin walked in, and sat down beside him. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" She asked teasingly.

"No. It's only nine."

"I was just kidding, get a sense of humor."

"Why does everyone tell me that?"

"Because you need to get one."

"You're so immature. _You're_ the one who's up past their bedtime."

"Someone's in a bad mood today. What's up?"

Henry sighed. "You know the thing with everybody's parents?"

"Yeah. I know what that actually is, too."

"Really?! You know what's going on? Will you tell me?" Henry asked, hopefully.

"Nope, sorry. People would kill me."

"But that's not fair!"

"Actually," She said, "It wouldn't be fair if I _did_ tell you. Why should you be the only one to find out?"

"Good point." Henry said, slightly disappointedly.

"Aw, don't be sad. Guess what? I had the _weirdest _dream!"

"What was it?" Henry asked, not really interested.

"Well, I was getting married, I can't remember who to, it might have been Ryo, actually... Anyway, all these people were there, and they were throwing flowers, and the flowers all landed on me and I suffocated."

Henry laughed. "Better not marry Ryo then, huh?"

"Aww..." Jaarin said, smiling. "You have any weird dreams lately?"

Henry hesitated. Why was everyone talking about dreams? Or was he just paranoid...?

"Umm... Yeah, but don't tell anyone, okay? 'Cause I don't know what it might mean..." Henry said nervously, starting to blush.

"Was it about a girl?" Jaarin asked mischievously.

Henry blushed more. "Well, actually, it was about two."

Jaarin had to try hard not to laugh. "Go on then."

"Well, it was on Wednesday night that I dreamt it... Um... Well, I dreamt that I was here, and then Rika and Ayaka showed up, and started fighting over me. And then in the end they shot each other."

"That's not that bad."

"But... You just don't understand!" Henry yelled.

"Come on, calm down. I think I understand. You think your dream might mean that you like the two of them, right?"

"It's more complicated than that! You see- Well, long story short, I like Rika, but I think I like Ayaka too. But I'm not supposed to like either of them!"

"Hey, what you mean not _supposed_ to? No-one can tell you who to like!"

"Rika likes Takato, Ayaka likes Kazu." Henry said flatly.

"Hmm... Do they have any sort of chance with those guys?"

"Not really. Kazu and Ayaka got into a big fight today, and he didn't like her anyway. And Takato's neutral, Rika _and_ Jeri asked him out, and he said no to both of them."

"Well there you go then, you've got a chance!"

"But neither of them like me! And there's no way to make them! Things might work like that for you, how old are you, 14 or something? But things don't work that way in real life."

Jaarin laughed. "You mean _your_ life, not _real_ life. You're right, things do work like that for me. I say it's a good system."

"I say it's stupid. I also say that I'm going to bed, goodnight."

"Why do people say that, anyway? _Good_ night? What if it's a _bad_ night?"

"_Goodnight_ Jaarin."

* * *

Yay! Chapter over! XD

Terriermon: Wow, you're hyper.

Lopmon: Deja vu. Did you say that already?

Terriermon: I don't know, she's been hyper too many times.

Me: I think you might have said something along the same lines at the start of the chapter.

Terriermon: Well you _are_ hyper!

Me: I know, I know.

Lopmon: Why did you say all those things at the start of the chapter?

Me: All those things? I just said how old I am, and that's because _that idiot_ (points to Terriermon) made me!

Terriermon: (sings) We're the ones who made you!

Lopmon: ...

Terriermon: It's a good song!

Me: Yeah, but it's old.

Terriermon: Old?

Me: It's not in the top ten countdown anymore.

Terriermon: It still only came out a month or so ago!

Me: It's old! Old I tell you!

Lopmon: Why don't we end this argument here?

Me: Fine. Anyway, don't forget to review people, and the _very last chapter_ should be up soon! I hope that at least _someone_ is as excited as I am! xD


	20. Mystery solved, but another began

Hi everyone! Welcome to... The _last chapter_!!! Yay!!

Terriermon: Cool. Finally, you've finished- well, almost finished, your first big story. Well done!

Lopmon: And there's meant to be a sequel?

Me: Yep! Haven't decided on the name yet, but it'll say in the summary that it's the sequel to this. I may refer to this story as TCLOTT, the confusing life of the tamers, see?

Terriermon: Why?

Me: There's a character (letter, number, space, that sort of thing) limit on summaries. So abbreviating this story name turns 30 or so characters into 6.

Lopmon: Makes sense.

Me: Anyway, since this is the last chapter, I'll list _everyone _that reviewed, for the whole story! Yay! Lots of thanks to: Duckie lover 151, Raakshii, Beowulf1111, Lupinelover, light soceress, Jacob the very manly, animemusiklover crunchyroll, dbgztfan2004, i forgot my password ^^u, and, last but not least, Pustolio the magnificent!

Terriermon: Going through those in any particular order?

Me: Backwards. Kind of.

Terriermon: Right, whatever that means.

Me: Lots of thanks to everyone reading this, too! XD

Terriermon: When are you gonna start the chapter? I want it to start!! Also, I think you've been building up the big thing too much. If people haven't personally experienced something similar, they might not think it's that big. So people, expect a letdown.

Me: No no no! Don't listen to him people! (Glares at Terriermon)

Terriermon: Stop looking at me like that!

Me: (Keeps glaring at him for a least 10 minutes)

Terriermon: At least I didn't say what it actually was!

Me: (Stops glaring) Good point!

Lopmon: This is ridiculous. Are you going to start the chapter, or what?

Me: Okay, okay. Fine. Here we go, for the last time this story!

* * *

It was Saturday morning, Takato woke up, got up, and went downstairs. There was nobody there.

"That's not right... Where'd my parents go?"

He looked at the clock. It was 10 in the morning. He decided to call Henry and see if his parents had disappeared too.

"_Hello?"_

"Hi. My parents disappeared..."

"_Mine too! I was thinking of calling everyone, and going to the park. Because all the digimon are in Guilmon's place, and it's likely that everyone's parents are there too."_

"That's a good idea. We can both call people, I'll call... I don't know."

"_To make it easy to remember, I can call the girls, and you can call the boys. Or we could do it the other way around, if you want."_

"I'm fine with calling the boys, girls are scary. Good luck!"

"_Thanks!"_

Takato hung up, and began calling people.

* * *

After everyone had been called, they all met up at the park.

"So," Rika said, "Why exactly are we all here?"

"Because," Henry explained, "All our parents disappeared, right?" This was met by multiple nods of agreement from the kids.

"And I'm pretty sure that they're with the digimon, who are in on this too. So, we're all gonna go to Guilmon's place, and I bet they'll be there."

"Why isn't Kenta here?" Miki asked, almost frantic. "He's been gone for days! Well, two days, if you don't count today... That's a lot, actually!"

"Well, me and Takato were calling everyone. He was in charge of calling the boys..." Henry trailed off, indicating that Takato should continue.

"I called him, and his house, at least 3 times each, and there was no answer from either." Takato said.

"Maybe he got kidnapped." Kazu suggested. "Me and Rika did, so... Maybe he was just kept there really long, and his parents freaked out or something."

"Maybe..." Henry said. "But, I'm sure everything will be resolved soon. Let's go!"

And so, they set off to Guilmon's place, in the hope that when they got there, things would be explained.

* * *

When they got there, it turned out that Henry was indeed right, their parents _were_ all there, and they appeared to be conspiring with the digimon.

"Hey! All of you!" Rika yelled, getting their attention. "Tell us what's going on, you've been keeping secrets long enough! What's going on?"

Henry's mother and Kenta's mother walked to the front, as they seemed to be the unofficial leaders.

"Well," Henry's mother began, "You kids are clearly smart, in some way, to have known that we would be here. And I suppose it _is_ about time that we tell you." A few worried glances were passed between the other parents, who, strangely enough, were mostly mothers.

"Are-are you _sure_ about this, Mayumi?" Kenta's mother asked.

"Yes, I am." Henry's mother said, somewhat uncertainly.

"Can you just hurry up and tell us already?" Ayaka whined.

"Well... How about we make you guess?" Henry's mother asked, smiling a little.

"It doesn't involve Kenta, does it?!" Miki asked, worriedly.

Henry's and Kenta's mothers sighed, almost sadly, it sounded like, at the same time.

"Oh my god, it _does_ invlove Kenta!!" Miki screamed, almost going hysterical. Jeri and Ayaka quickly went over to her to try and calm her down.

"Alright... I guess we might as well be straight with you all." Mayumi said. "Kenta..."

Miki interrupted by yelling; "I don't want to hear this! It's bad news, isn't it? Isn't it?!"

"Come on, I'm sure everything's fine." Jeri said. "Calm down, it'll be okay."

Henry's mother sighed, and continued. "If you want me to tell you, please don't interrupt anymore, and that applies to everybody. Anyway, I don't know how to say this, but... Kenta is dead."

There was utter silence among the kids. Until after a few minutes, Kazu spoke up. "Yeah, right. April fool's day was a couple of months ago, what did you do this for?"

Kenta's mother sighed, and was visibly trying to keep herself from crying. "Kazu... We're not kidding. He _is_ dead. We all wish this was some sort of joke or something, but it isn't." And at that point, she couldn't say any more, and broke down crying.

Takato and Henry went over to Kazu, who was staring blankly into space.

"Um, Kazu? Are you alright?" Takato asked, trying not to sound sad.

Kazu was silent for a few moments, but finally said; "He's not dead. He can't be. Why would someone just die? Why are they saying that?" He was saying it in no more than a whisper.

Takato and Henry looked on sympathetically. They were sad too, but as with everyone else, it hadn't properly sunk in yet. And it had to be far, far, worse for Kazu, as the two of them were best friends.

"I don't get it," Takato said. "How come I'm not all sad, and crying, and all? Isn't that what you're meant to do when people die?"

"Yeah, I know. But the only one who's really being sad is Miki. Did you notice that? It's shock. It's just like with physical pain, it tkes a while to start hurting, you go into shock for a while first, and you're numb for a while. Don't worry though," He said, smiling sadly as his eyes filled with tears, "Soon you'll be really sad, we all will."

Takato felt himself starting to cry. He wondered in the back of his mind, if Rika was going to cry. He figured she would.

"I-I wonder how he died..."

"Yeah..." Henry replied. He looked at Kazu, who was frozen in the same postion, still staring into space.

* * *

Over with the girls, they were a bit less calm than the boys. Miki was screaming incoherently, and crying hysterically, while Ayaka and Jeri tried to comfort her, whilst crying themselves. Rika was standing back, unsure of what to do, or how to react. How were you meant to react when someone died, anyway?

Rika watched the other girls, who seemed to have given up on any remains of sanity, and were crying their eyes out. She looked over at Takato, Henry and Kazu, who all seemed calm, although Kazu looked almost catatonic. She walked over to them.

"Hi Rika." Takato said.

"Hi... Did you notice that we all kinda went boys-side, girls-side?"

"Yeah," Henry said, "I think it was because Miki went crazy, and Ayaka and Jeri tried to comfort her."

"They kinda gave up on that, I think." Rika said. "Are you guys not sad, or anything? I'm not sad either, but, aren't we meant to be?"

"Takato asked me the same thing. Just- I don't want to go through it again." Henry said, depressedly.

Rika sighed. "I wonder how much they all know. And I wonder how long they've been keeping this from us..." She said, more to herself than anyone else.

Without any warning, Kazu started crying almost hysterically. He didn't say anything, just cried.

Before anyone could go to do anything about it, Henry's mother got their attention.

"Excuse me everyone, I know this was a big shock. But, unfortunately, there's more."

"What more could there be?" Jeri asked, quietly.

"Well, I'm sure you're all wondering, how did he die?"

This was met by agreement.

"The thing is... He was murdered."

* * *

Okay, chapter over! Wait, not just the chapter, it's the whole story!! Yay!

Terriermon: That was a terrible ending! It wasn't closure, and it wasn't a proper cliff-hanger!

Me: It's close enough!

Terriermon: It is not!

Me: Lopmon, wasn't that close enough to a cliff-hanger?

Lopmon: Yeah, it was. My only problem with it was that it was a little short.

Me: Well, yeah, but it needed to end on a cliff-hanger.

Terriermon: That wasn't a cliff-hanger!

Me: Yes it was!

Lopmon: Oh shut up, both of you.

Me: Anyway, thanks everyone that read and reviewed this! Yay for all of you! And, there will be a sequel soon! Well, kinda soon. Okay, probably in a few weeks. But, soon compared to the speed I've seen some people update. Besides, I have an excuse, I'm moving house, and the house doesn't have internet yet. And the computer doesn't do anything, becuase there's no keyboard.

Terriermon: That's a horrible excuse!

Me: Why are you being like this? Pretending to be DeepwolfandAmbiekinzarePATHETIC?

Lopmon: Who's that?

Me: As the name implies, a mean person who likes to flame DeepWolff and Ambiekinz. Anyway, Terriermon, I put together _a futon frame_. So there! I'd like to see you do that!

Terriermon: How could I put together a futon frame? Look how small I am!

Me: So don't be mean to me, I'm bigger than you!

Lopmon: Can we end this?

Me: Okay. So, bye everyone! Please review and tell me what you thought of the chapter/story! And the sequel should be written soon-ish! xD


End file.
